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A woman walks into strong winds as Super Typhoon Chan-hom approaches. Photo: Reuters
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated from coastal areas in Zhejiang , as the mainland yesterday raised the red typhoon alert – the highest in the four-tier system – for the first time this year for the arrival of Super Typhoon Chan-hom.
The typhoon was expected to hit land at noon today between Fuding in Fujian province and Xiangshan in Zhejiang, the National Meteorological Centre said.
By last night, it was centred 330km away, northeast of Taipei, moving towards the mainland at about 20 km/h. At noon yesterday, the wind speed in the eye wall of the typhoon, the most intense part of the storm, had reached 210km/h – the highest speed reached by Super Typhoon Rammasun that killed more than 60 when it swept past Hainan province at about this time last year.
The storm is expected to bring up to 300mm of rain to the east of Zhejiang in just one day, according to the China News Service.
Fishing vessels take shelter in Taizhou, Zhejiang province. Photo: Xinhua
Waves as high as five-storey buildings crashed ashore at Wenling , Fujian, sending residents and tourists scurrying indoors, local media said.
Shanghai’s railway bureau cancelled train services along the east coast for yesterday and today, and was considering halting services on inland lines if Chan-hom changed course, state media reported.
More than 12,000 emergency shelters, capable of holding up to 200,000 people, have been set up across Zhejiang.
The Fujian provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters ordered the evacuation of coastal fishing farms in four cities. Zhejiang recalled 20,000 fishing vessels to port.
Across the Taiwan Strait, at least six people were injured as the typhoon’s rain bands crossed Bitou Cape in the north of Taiwan, Central News Agency said.
By 6pm, the Taipei municipal government had received more than 90 reports of fallen trees. Taiwan Power Company said this had caused power outages to more than 2,500 households.
Work at all schools and offices in Taipei was suspended.
Frontier defence soldiers in the Sansha township of Xiapu, Fujian province. Photo: Xinhua
Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je said he was worried residents would be tempted to travel rather than remain indoors if there was little rainfall in the morning.
Water gates across Taipei were closed as the city braced for strong winds and heavy rain.
Local authorities closed several main roads in Taipei and highways running through mountainous terrain to other parts of the island.
They also began towing 8vehicles parked in hazardous 8locations.
At least 106 outbound and inbound flights at Taoyuan International Airport were cancelled, as were 21 high-speed train services in the north of the island.
Southern Taiwan is expected to see heavier rain today.
Shanghai (AFP) - Typhoon Chan-hom swiped eastern China on Saturday, paralysing transport links and devastating farmland as authorities evacuated more than a million people, the government and state media said.
The storm, which killed five people in the Philippines earlier in the week and injured more than 20 people in Japan on Friday, made landfall at around 4:40 pm (0840 GMT) on an island near the city of Ningbo, which is south of Shanghai, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said.
Chan-hom was however expected to skirt the coast before heading back out to sea rather than going further inland.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the storm, which forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and bus and rail services.
Ningbo, in Zhejiang province, has a population of almost six million people while Zhujiajian town, which took the direct hit from the typhoon, is home to around 36,000.
The NMC maintained its highest red alert for the storm despite earlier downgrading it from "super" to "strong".
Zhejiang evacuated 1.07 million people and called its entire fishing fleet back to port, state media said. Provincial authorities said earlier that nearly 30,000 vessels had moored safely.
Powerful winds blew down trees and street signs across Zhejiang and knocked down an unoccupied building in the city of Cixi, provincial television reported.
More than 600 flights at four airports in Zhejiang were cancelled, the official Xinhua news agency said.
In Zhejiang's Sanmen county, local television showed dozens of melons floating in a flooded field, as a farmer lamented his lost harvest. "There might be no crop this year," he said.
Torrential rain in Taizhou city triggered a landslide which briefly blocked a road.
- Typhoon to 'brush' Shanghai -
Shanghai forecast the typhoon would "brush" within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the city late Saturday or early Sunday as it veered into the Yellow Sea, according to a local government posting on its official microblog.
The Shanghai government urged residents to stay home and cancelled several public events as rain picked up towards midday.
"We recommend everyone does their best to use 'squatting at home' tactics to welcome the typhoon," it said in a statement.
More than 400 flights at the city's two airports were cancelled, along with 330 long-distance bus journeys and several trains, according to reports.
Traffic thinned in Shanghai, though enterprising taxi drivers still cruised the streets looking for fares despite the storm, which blew branches off trees.
Chan-hom is forecast to affect a wide swathe of China, also bringing heavy rain to the eastern provinces of Fujian and Jiangsu, the NMC said.
Fujian, south of Zhejiang, has evacuated more than 30,000 people and Jiangsu over 46,000.
The typhoon is the second storm to hit China in days after severe tropical storm Linfa made landfall on the coast of Guangdong province further south.
The US government's Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast that after hitting China, Chan-hom would head towards the Korean peninsula, bringing "gale-force" winds to the west coast of South Korea.
