Five airports were closed, prompting the cancellation of almost 400 flights, while more than 300 trains were also cancelled, Xinhua said. More than 15,000 residents in these areas were evacuated.
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About 390,000 households had been affected by power cuts, majority in Pingtung and Taitung counties, according to Taiwan’s emergency management service.
A super typhoon known as Nepartak has hit the eastern coast of Taiwan on Friday morning, leaving vast swathes of destruction in its path.
The typhoon could linger around Taiwan for up to eight hours as it slowly makes its way toward southern China, according to the bureau.
Once past Taiwan, Nepartak is expected to pound China on Saturday, where it will bring further rain to some areas already struggling to cope with heavy flooding.
Nepartak is the strongest “first typhoon” of the rainy season to hit Taiwan in more than 50 years, and it intensified incredibly quickly, going from a tropical storm on Monday afternoon to a category 4 super typhoon on Tuesday.
China’s meteorological center says the storm made landfall around 1:45 p.m on Friday in the municipality of Quanzhou, packing winds of 90 kilometers (55 miles) an hour, the Associated Press reported on Saturday.
Since Tuesday, more than 3,000 visitors have been evacuated from Green Island and Orchid Island, two popular tourist spots off south-eastern Taitung County, local government officials said. The victims are a soldier who fell into the sea off Dongyin Island and was found dead yesterday, and a man who drowned off a beach in Hualien a day earlier. The storm is expected to bring strong winds and rain to the coastal regions of Fujian and Zhejiang.
NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites provided a visible and infrared view of Typhoon Nepartak before and during its movement over Taiwan.
A water tank rolled along a street in Taitung, and trees and light poles were blown sideways by strong winds, cable news channel ETTV showed.
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The 200 kilometre-radius storm had weakened to a “moderate” typhoon, Taiwan’s weather bureau said, and was moving north-west at a speed of 12kph.
