The National Meteorological Center predicted Soudelor, named after a legendary Micronesian chief, would be downgraded to a tropical depression by tonight as it moved further inland. The girl’s twin sister is among the missing.
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Other victims include an eight-year-old girl and her mother, who were killed in rough seas off the coast of Yilan as the storm approached over the Pacific Ocean on Friday.
The typhoon brought strong winds and heavy rainfall as it made landfall early Saturday and is expected to move into the Taiwan Strait and onto mainland China later in the day. Typhoon Soudelor hit with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour, according to Twain’s Central Weather Bureau.
In this image released by the New Taipei Fire Department, emergency rescue personnel dig a man from a flash mudslide caused by Typhoon Soudelor in Xindian, New Taipei City, northern Taiwan, Saturday, August 8, 2015. “There are too many trees down, and I even saw six downed power poles”.
Saturday’s typhoon stood out because its “force was really big” compared with previous storms, a media official with the Taiwan government’s disaster response command center said. Thousands of police and soldiers were on standby to aid those affected by Soudelor.
More than a meter (39 inches) of rain has fallen in parts of Taiwan, with as much as 1.5 to 2 meters possible by the time the storm passes in the country’s southwest, according to meteorologist Ivan Cabrera.
The centre of the storm made landfall in eastern Taiwan at 4:40 a.m. Saturday. Murky flood water is over the roof of cars in some areas.
Television footage showed people stranded on flooded riverbanks, and mudslides surging into mountain villages.
Some 1.87 million people were without electricity as of Saturday morning, according to state-run Taipower. At least four people died and around two million homes lost power.
The typhoon is expected to hit China on Saturday night with Chinese authorities ordering the evacuation of an estimated 163,000 people and ships ahead of its landfall.
The entire island was under an advisory for “extremely torrential rain”. The city of Fuding experienced the heaviest downpour of over 501 mm.
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Soudelor walloped the Northern Mariana Islands earlier in the week, knocking out water and power to Saipan.
