YILAN (Reuters) – Taiwan hunkered down on Wednesday for the arrival of a strengthening Typhoon Gaemi, with financial markets shut, people getting the day off work and flights cancelled, while the military went on stand-by amid forecasts of torrential rain.
Gaemi, expected to be the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in eight years, is set to make landfall on the northeast coast on Wednesday evening, the weather authorities said.
They upgraded its status to a strong typhoon, packing gusts of up to 227 kph (141 mph) near its centre.
After crossing the Taiwan Strait, it is likely to hit the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian late on Thursday afternoon.
"The next 24 hours will present a very severe challenge," Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai told a televised meeting of the emergency response centre.
In rural Yilan county, where the typhoon will first hit land, wind and rain gathered strength, shutting eateries as most roads emptied out.
"This could be the biggest typhoon in recent years," fishing boat captain Hung Chun told Reuters, adding that Yilan's harbour of Suao was packed with boats seeking shelter.
"It's charging directly towards the east coast and if it makes landfall here the damage would be enormous."
Work and school were suspended across Taiwan, with streets almost deserted in the capital Taipei.
The government said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from sparsely populated mountain areas at high risk of landslides from the "extremely torrential rain".
Almost all domestic flights had been cancelled, along with 201 international flights, the transport ministry said.
All rail operations will stop from midday (0400 GMT), with an abbreviated schedule for high-speed links between north and south Taiwan that will continue to operate, it added.
However, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple, said it expected its factories to maintain normal production during the typhoon, after it activated routine preparations.
Japanese media said the typhoon also cancelled all flights departing from and arriving at Miyako and Ishigaki in Japan's Okinawa prefecture, which lies in the storm's path.
SOLDIERS STANDING BY
The typhoon is expected to bring rain of up to 1,800 mm (70 inches) to some mountainous counties in central and southern Taiwan, weather officials said.
Taiwan's defence ministry said it had put 29,000 soldiers on stand-by for disaster relief efforts.
The typhoon has severely curtailed this year's annual HanKuang war games, but they have not been cancelled, with scheduled live fire drills held on the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
Gaemi is expected to bring heavy to very intense rains over vast swathes of China from Thursday, the water resources ministry warned.
These are areas between the Pearl River basin in the south and the Songhua and Liao River basins on the northeastern border with Russia and North Korea, it said on Wednesday.
The rains are expected to last until July 31, fuelled by the typhoon's abundant moisture, it added.
While typhoons can be very destructive, Taiwan relies on them to replenish reservoirs after traditionally drier winters, especially in its south.
AT LEAST 13 KILLED IN PHILIPPINS
AP adds: Gaemi, which was called Carina in the Philippines, did not make landfall in the archipelago but enhanced its seasonal monsoon rains. The rains set off at least a dozen landslides and floods over five days, killing at least eight and displacing 600,000 people, including 35,000 who went to emergency shelters, the Philippines’ disaster risk mitigation agency said.
A landslide buried a rural shanty Tuesday in the mountainside town of Agoncillo in Batangas province, and the bodies of a pregnant woman and three children, aged 9 to 15, were dug out Wednesday morning. A rice porridge vendor was hit by a falling tree in another Batangas town Tuesday night, raising the toll in the country to 13 dead.
In the densely populated region around the Philippine capital, government work and school classes were suspended after nonstop rains flooded many areas overnight, trapping cars in rising floodwater and stranding people in their homes. Residents who ventured out of their homes waded into knee- and waist-high floodwaters with some using improvised dinghies and paddling their way alongside cars, trucks and SUVs.
In Marikina city in the eastern fringes of the Manila region, the continuing downpour swelled a major river, prompting many residents to flee to safety. The strong currents swept away a steel cargo container, refrigerators, pieces of home furniture and tree trunks, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered authorities to speed up efforts to deliver food and other aid to isolated rural villages. “People there may not have eaten for days,” Marcos said in a televised emergency meeting.
The Philippine coast guard said more than 350 passengers and cargo truck drivers and workers were stranded in seaports after ferries and cargo ships were prohibited from venturing into rough seas. It added that coast guard personnel helped more than 200 residents evacuate a coastal village in Batangas province south of Manila where storm-tossed waves have hit coastal houses.
The storm prompted the cancellation of air force drills off Taiwan’s east coast and ferry services Tuesday.
Despite occasional flooding, Taiwan has substantially improved its resiliency through early warnings and preparations. The effects of the storm were expected to continue into Friday as it moved in a northwestern direction toward mainland China.