Macau seeks to help owners of cars wrecked in Typhoon Hato – by requiring them to buy new wheels in vehicle-packed city

Calls for rethink of policy as tiny casino hub reels from insufficient infrastructure to handle car population and those damaged by floods

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Damaged vehicles left at a basement car park near the Macau-Zhuhai border reflect a growing problem with the city’s infrastructure. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Published: 11:45am, 10 Jun 2018Updated: 10:32pm, 10 Jun 2018

A festering pile-up of flood-damaged cars remains abandoned in the overstretched underground car parks of Macau almost a year after the city was ravaged by the most deadly storm it had seen in decades.

This August sees the first anniversary of Typhoon Hato which claimed the lives of 16 people and led to troops from the People’s Liberation Army deployed on the streets of the former Portuguese enclave for the first time to help in clean-up operations.

But, as photographs published on Sunday by the South China Morning P ost show, while the highly lucrative wheels of the world’s richest gaming destination continue to spin, the fallout and financial wrangling from the killer storm has not gone away.

Widespread floods across Macau during 2017’s Typhoon Hato. Photo: Instagram

The car wrecks – some from Typhoon Hagupit of 2008 and many “parked” in a privately-managed government car park near the city’s border gate with Zhuhai – are likely to fuel increasing public anger in a tiny city close to gridlock with too many vehicles and too little infrastructure to handle them.

Following the chaos last year after Typhoon Hato, Macau Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai-on made a public apology and announced the resignation of its weather chief. Chui admitted his administration had been ill-prepared for the mega storm.