Aussie expats describe 'scary' moment Ragasa hit Hong Kong

A huge cleanup effort is underway after a super typhoon slammed Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.

Australians Esther and Dan Lee moved from Townsville to Hong Kong just six months ago and were at home with their four-year-old son, on the 48th floor of their high-rise apartment building when disaster struck.

"We were at a T8 warning, which is one of the higher warnings where everything kind of shuts down," Esther told Today.

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"But it was about 4am that I woke up and our windows and our bedroom were shaking - it was just so loud and it just kind of got worse from there."

Esther said her son, Artie's, room faces the direction the wind was hitting from, so he was a bit scared when it hit, listening to his air-conditioning unit shaking.

"But once the sun came out in the morning he was actually fine with it, just running around pretending to be a crab all morning," she said.

"I know in our area we weren't hit that that bad, but we've had trees down and we went for a walk yesterday and Artie made it his mission to clean up one of the paths, picking up all the sticks."

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While it was scary when the storm hit, Esther praised the government for how efficient they were in preparing residents.

"We've been hearing the alerts all week, so we knew it was coming and the government was really good - they shut down schools and businesses a few days before it hit, so there was really no need to be outside," she said.

"It was like a ghost town here in Hong Kong, which is usually really busy, but we were getting all the warnings throughout the news and on our phones and our building also puts up signs to tell us what we need to do and where we can go if we need help."

Hear more from the Aussie couple in the video above