YILAN, Taiwan: Taiwan braced for the arrival of a strengthening Typhoon Gaemi on Wednesday, with financial markets closed, people given the day off work and flights cancelled, while the military went on standby amid forecasts of torrential rain.
Gaemi, expected to be the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in eight years, is expected to make landfall on the northeast coast on Wednesday evening, weather authorities said.
They upgraded their status to a strong typhoon, packing gusts of up to 227 km/h near its center.
After crossing the Taiwan Strait, it is likely to hit southeast China's Fujian province late Thursday afternoon.
“The next 24 hours will present a very severe challenge,” Taiwanese Prime Minister Cho Jung-tai told a televised meeting of the emergency response center.
In rural Yilan County, where the typhoon will make landfall for the first time, wind and rain gathered strength, closing restaurants as most roads cleared.
“This could be the biggest typhoon in recent years,” fishing boat captain Hung Chun told Reuters, adding that Yilan's Suao harbor was full of boats seeking shelter.
“It's charging straight towards the east coast and if it gets here, the damage would be enormous.”
Work and school were suspended in Taiwan, with streets almost deserted in the capital Taipei.
The government said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from sparsely populated mountainous areas at high risk of landslides due to “extremely torrential rain”.
Almost all domestic flights were cancelled, along with 201 international flights, the Transport Ministry said.
All rail operations will stop at noon, with a shortened schedule for high-speed links between northern and southern Taiwan continuing to operate, it added.
However, TSMC, the world's largest chip maker and a major supplier to Apple, said it expected its factories to maintain normal production during the typhoon after activating routine preparations.
STANDING SOLDIERS
The typhoon is expected to bring up to 1,800 mm of rain to some mountainous counties in central and southern Taiwan, weather officials said.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it had put 29,000 soldiers on standby for disaster relief efforts.
The typhoon drastically curtailed this year's annual Han Kuang war games, but they have not been canceled, with live-fire drills scheduled for Wednesday on the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait.
Gaemi is expected to bring heavy to very heavy rains over large areas 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, fueled by the typhoon's abundant moisture, it added.
Gaemi and a southwest monsoon brought heavy rains to the Philippine capital region and northern provinces on Wednesday, halting work and schools and suspending stock and currency trading. The storm killed 12 people.
While typhoons can be very destructive, Taiwan relies on them to fill reservoirs after traditionally drier winters, especially in its south.
