THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 17TH OCTOBER, 1874.
LOCALITY.
HOUSES
HOUSES PARTIALLY
TOTALLY
DESTROYED.
DESTROYED TO BE
PULLED DOWN.
575
DEATHS FROM FALL OF HOUSES.
Victoria,
Yow Ma Tee,..
Stanley,
Aberdeen,
Ap-li Chow,
Shau-ki Wán,
Sai Wán,
Little Hongkong,
Hung Hom,
Tai Kok Tsui,
Mong Kok,
Shek Ó,
TOTAL,....
114
214.
56
29
60
32
156
3
10
48
22
10
29
23
97
6
5
15
43
•
2
16
16
32
14
30
...
18
all the village.
273
740
87
The Government Inspectors also report that the villages of Hok-Yün, Ma-t'au-wai, Tokwawan, Matowkok, and Matowchung have been left without a house standing, and that the ruins of the two latter have been deserted by the villagers.
The foregoing table only gives the number of people who were found dead or dying under the ruins of houses, but it is feared, although no record can be obtained, that a very large number must have received bodily injuries, as it is known that as houses became unroofed and were threatened with annihilation, their inmates left them and went into the streets when the latter were quite dark and when building débris, roofing tiles and other missiles were being hurled from every housetop with a force almost beyond credence.
Towards 2 A.M., the violence of the wind had driven before it such a large volume of water into the harbour through the Lyeemoon Pass, that at this hour, which under ordinary circumstances should have been that of low water, the sea had risen considerably above the datum of high water and was washing over the lower portions of the City. Before 3 A.M., the Gas Works were submerged, and the gas supply being cut off, the City was during these most anxious moments suddenly plunged in darkness. About this time, Mr. CREAGH, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, and some other gentle- men who had collected together a few volunteers to put out a fire, which had broken out in Jervois Street, report that the latter as well as the streets between it, Bonham Strand, and the Praya, were four feet under water, that the people were up to their waists in water, and that the waves were buffet- ing the fire engine so that it could not be used. This evidence is corroborated by the marks left on many buildings after the sea retired, among others, the Harbour Master's Office had five feet of water in its lower storey.
The entire sea frontage of the City has been very seriously damaged. The Praya wall for a length of of a mile between the City Hall and Toong Kai Street has been broken up, and will have to be entirely rebuilt with new material. From Toong Kai Street as far as the Sailors' Home, a distance of one mile, the wall shows so many breaches, and is altogether so undermined that it is still a matter of doubt whether long sections of it may not require rebuilding in like manner.
In many places from the Eastern Guard House to East Point, the sea wall has also given way and will require reconstruction on a more solid basis than has hitherto been adopted in Hongkong. But as the very important subject of the sea defence of the City is one of special Report, now under preparation, it will be premature to dilate upon it in this memorandum.
After the sea retired, the Praya embankment, which previously formed one of the most capacious business thoroughfares of the City, was left in places like a sloping beach covered with the stones and concrete débris of the sea wall together with wrecks and spars. All these heaped one upon another, rendered the embankment almost impassable. In places where the sea wall was knocked down and the embankment behind it scoured away, some of the large mansions fronting the sea, and which are occupied by the principal merchants of the Colony, were already being undermined by the waves and they would have inevitably fallen had the gale lasted a few hours longer.
The wharves, both public and private, built out at right angles to the Praya along the whole extent of the City, have been swept away or otherwise injured, with the exception of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Ship Company's new jetty and the Hongkong Pier, both timber structures. Of the Government piers, but few have been left in such a condition as to be worth repairing, and it is deserving of attention that those apparently solid structures which were made of ashlar granite, succumbed long before the timber jetties in their neighbourhood.
The whole of Victoria is drained and sewered into the harbour, the drainage being led out at intervals along the Praya wall. The destruction of the wall, entailing the destruction of the sewer
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