YILAN, Taiwan: Taiwan was reeling on Wednesday from the arrival of intensifying Typhoon Gaemi, with financial markets closed, people given days off and flights cancelled, while the military went on alert amid forecasts of torrential rain.
Gaemi, expected to be the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in eight years, will make landfall on the northeastern coast on Wednesday night, weather officials said.
They upgraded its status to a severe typhoon, packing wind gusts of up to 227 km/h near its center.
After crossing the Taiwan Strait, it is likely to hit the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian late Thursday afternoon.
“The next 24 hours will present a very serious challenge,” Taiwan's Prime Minister Cho Jung-tai said at a televised meeting with the emergency center.
In rural Yilan county, where the typhoon will first make landfall, wind and rain picked up, closing eateries as most roads were emptied.
“This could be the biggest typhoon in recent years,” fishing boat captain Hung Chun told Reuters, adding that Yilan's port in Suao was full of boats seeking shelter.
“It's charging straight towards the east coast and if it lands here the damage would be massive.”
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 mountainous areas at high risk of landslides from “extreme downpour”.
Almost all domestic flights had been cancelled, along with 201 international flights, the transport ministry said.
All rail operations will cease from noon, with a shortened schedule for high-speed services between northern and southern Taiwan continuing to operate, it added.
But TSMC, the world's largest contract manufacturer and a major supplier to Apple, said it expected its factories to maintain normal production during the typhoon, after they activated routine preparations.
SOLDIERS STANDING BY
The typhoon is expected to bring up to 1,800mm of rain to some mountainous counties in central and southern Taiwan, weather officials said.
Taiwan's defense minister said it had put 29,000 troops on standby for disaster relief.
The typhoon has severely curtailed this year's annual war games in Han Kuang, but they have not been canceled, with scheduled fire drills held on the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
Gaemi is expected to bring heavy to very intense rains over large parts of China from Thursday, the Ministry of Water Resources 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 rain is expected to continue 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, bringing work and schools to a halt, with stock and currency trading suspended. The storm killed 12 people.
While typhoons can be very destructive, Taiwan relies on them to replenish reservoirs after traditionally drier winters, especially in its south.
