Super Typhoon Nepartak brough chaos to Taiwan on Friday, forcing more than 15,000 people to flee their homes as the strongest winds over a century lashed part of the island. About 1.4 million people have been evacuated from their homes.
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The typhoon will linger around Taiwan until late Friday as it slowly makes its way toward southern China, Chen Yi-liang of the Central Weather Bureau said early Friday. Three deaths and 172 injuries were reported, bullet train services were suspended and over 340 global and 300 domestic flights cancelled, an emergency services website showed.
Li said that by early Friday, the typhoon had killed one person and injured 66 others.
It is forecast to make landfall Friday morning south of Hualien city in eastern Taiwan.
About 270,000 households had been affected by power cuts, a lot of them in Hualien and Taitung counties, Li said.
Typhoons used to kill many people in China but the government now enforces evacuations and takes precautions well in advance, which has helped save many lives.
Almost 4,000 people evacuated were in New Taipei City, which includes Wulai, a popular hot spring area near the capital which was cut off for days after Typhoon Soudelor ravaged Taiwan last August.
The railway will be closed for most of the day.
While the storm is due to make landfall at about 6:30 am local time – dropping nearly a meter of rain that could wash into villages along the eastern coast, light damage was already being reported in some locations and trees were falling.
The 200 kilometre-radius storm had weakened to a “moderate” typhoon, Taiwan’s weather bureau said, and was moving northwest at a speed of 12 kph.
He also said the typhoon will exit the Philippine area of responsibility by Friday afternoon, and will further weaken when it reaches mainland China at night.
It was expected to “cause impact on the entire province with severe wind and rains”, the Fujian Meteorological Administration said, predicting wind speeds would have slowed to 137 kph by the time it hit.
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Food prices in Taiwan jumped ahead of the typhoon, local media reported, while transportation minister Ho Chen Tan promised Taoyuan International Airport would be able to withstand a direct hit from the storm.
