A huge stock of sandbags was purchased at school in 2019, to defend against the kind of devastation caused by Super Typhoon Mangkhut the previous year.

The 750 bags have been used on a number of occasions since to barricade the school against the damage posed by severe weather.

In October 2021 as Tropical Cyclone Kompasu was threatening Hong Kong, the ravages of Manghhut resurfaced in the memory, and ICHK students and staff came together in our own mini-Blitz moment.

Faced with the need to close the school and batten down for the campus, four classes of Year 8s and 10s combined to dig out the sandbags from their hiding places, haul them to danger spots around school, and build the flood-defences that had been sorely lacking when Mangkhut hit.

The students were purposeful, committed and focussed in their task, demonstrating the skills we work hard to inculcate in all Year 7s when they join ICHK. They are taught to self-regulate, to switch seamlessly between ego states, so as to match behaviour to the prevailing social conditions, and the exercise with the sandbags offered the perfect example of this lesson bearing fruit at the sharp end of school life.

By the time the EDB officially closed school, the ICHK campus was already secure and safe to face whatever the storm might bring.