The Drainage Services Department says the number of emergency response teams for extreme weather events will be increased this year from 160 to 180 for deployment in more than 30 operational stations.

Department director Ringo Mok said the increase was made based on multiple factors, including resource availability and the current ability to respond to and bring flooding incidents under control within one to two hours.

'If we further increase the number of emergency teams by 20... that will be sufficient for us to cope with extreme weather," he said.

"At the same time, the increase in the number of emergency teams can reduce the deployment time as well as working time."

The department will continue to apply innovative technology in flood prevention works, including robots that help to examine, clean and drain sewage, which has been in use since 2021.

Among them are Crawler-type survey robots, River bots and Mobile Powerful Pumping Robot.

In Yuen Long, an estimated HK$4.6 billion has been spent on a flood prevention construction project undergoing since May 2023.

The project includes a super drainage pump that can drain water volumes the equivalent of seven Olympic-size swimming pools, as well as automatic flood protection walls.

"The progress of the Yuen Long project is going very well, and the project will be completed in stages by 2030... and the first part of the flood prevention facilities will be actually put into use by 2027," said Mok.