# Super Typhoon Ragasa leaves Taiwan missing and Hong Kong battered
Event date: 2025-09-23
Super Typhoon Ragasa caused a decades-old barrier lake in Hualien County, Taiwan, to burst, killing at least 14 people and leaving 124 missing, according to AFP reporting carried by The Guardian. The storm also battered Hong Kong as it moved toward southern China, leaving fallen trees, flooded streets and significant storm surge in its wake.
In Taiwan, officials said 18 people were injured and the death toll was revised down from 17 to 14. The fire department said 33 people were missing, which helps explain why the number of people unaccounted for remained so high even after the first round of rescues. The barrier-lake failure turned a violent typhoon into a sudden flood emergency.
Hong Kong saw widespread damage as the storm surge smashed the glass doors of a hotel and flooded its lobby, while several districts experienced flooding and strong winds ripped the top off a pedestrian footbridge. More than 760 people took shelter in temporary centers, and the city’s airport reported hundreds of cancelled passenger flights. The MTR suspended train services on open sections, showing how thoroughly the storm disrupted daily life.
Mainland China also moved quickly, ordering businesses and schools to close in at least 10 cities and evacuating 400,000 people in Shenzhen. Authorities issued the first red wave warning of the year as the storm approached the coast between Zhuhai and Zhanjiang. The source says scientists see storms becoming more powerful in a warming world, and Ragasa offered a grim example of how a single system can affect Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China at once.
Ragasa’s impact also shows how a single storm can force governments across different systems to act in parallel. Taiwan had to deal with the lake burst and missing people, Hong Kong with floodwater and transport shutdowns, and mainland China with mass evacuations and closures. That cross-border cascade is what makes the event so serious: the storm was not one city’s disaster but a regional emergency that exposed how much is at stake when a very strong typhoon makes landfall in a densely populated corridor.
The response across the region also shows how high-end storms now force governments to think in systems. Evacuations, school closures and transport shutdowns are all parts of one coordinated effort to keep people alive while the storm passes. Ragasa’s damage will be counted in deaths and missing people first, but its lasting effect may be the pressure it puts on how coastal cities plan for the next one.
