China on red alert for super typhoon
Print Edition
CHINA was on its highest alert last night as Super Typhoon Chan-Hom headed toward the country’s east coast.
The National Meteorological Center issued a red alert yesterday morning for Chan-Hom, whose center was spotted 430 kilometers southeast off the coast of Zhejiang Province at 2pm.
The typhoon was moving northwest from the East China Sea at 20 kilometers per hour, but was still strengthening. It is forecast to land somewhere between Rui’an and Zhoushan in Zhejiang sometime before noon today.
The wind speed at the center of the typhoon is forecast to top 58 meters per second at landfall.
In Zhejiang, more than 220,000 people have been evacuated and 20,000 fishing vessels returned to harbor for shelter. The province upgraded its emergency response by two levels to prepare for the typhoon.
The storm has disrupted traffic, and direct shipping routes to Taiwan from Zhejiang have been suspended since Thursday. About 100 flights were canceled yesterday, and some long-distance buses and trains have been suspended.
The typhoon has brought rains and strong gales to the coastal regions of Zhejiang and waves as tall as 10 meters were seen off the coast.
“The typhoon seems very powerful. We have sealed all our windows and doors and have stored food,” said Liu Yimin, a villager in coastal Huagang Village.
The Wenzhou government has asked all 53,000 flood control workers in the city to stand by over the weekend.
Flood control and drought relief headquarters in neighboring Fujian Province ordered all people on coastal fishing farms in Ningde, Fuzhou, Pingtan and Putian to evacuate.
Chan-Hom began to bear down on Taiwan yesterday, where the weather bureau categorized it as a “severe typhoon.”
The island’s stock market was closed and schools and offices shut as heavy rainfall and fierce winds battered the north.
Troops have been deployed to northeastern areas and fishing boats called back to ports.
Mountain communities were particularly at risk with warnings over landslides, authorities said. The township of Chien-shih in Hsinchu County was deluged with 150 millimeters of rainfall overnight on Thursday.
“As the storm is swirling toward the waters off the north and northeast, rains and winds are expected to be on the rise,” the weather bureau said.
A number of flights in and out of Okinawa and northern Taiwan were canceled.
Hot on the heels of Chan-Hom, Typhoon Nangka was swelling over the Pacific Ocean and is expected to travel northwest toward Japan’s Ryukyu Islands in the coming days. The Japan Meteorological Agency described the storm’s intensity as “very strong.”
The storm left five dead in the Philippines, including three children, as it swept through from Tuesday with flooding almost a meter deep in the northern island of Luzon and 1,500 people displaced.
Typhoon Linfa, which made landfall in south China’s Guangdong Province on Thursday, affected more than 1.6 million people, officials said.
Around 288 houses collapsed and 56,000 people were displaced after the storm caused a direct economic loss of 1.3 billion yuan (US$213 million), the Guangdong Civil Affairs Department said.
No casualties were reported.
Linfa landed in the city of Shanwei’s coastal areas at midday on Thursday, with winds of up to 126 kilometers per hour.
More than 130 townships in five cities were affected by downpours.
However, the storm brought little rainfall to the city of Zhanjiang, which has been hit by its worst drought in history this year.
Civil affairs authorities in Guangdong said they had organized disaster relief for affected areas.
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