Some 630,000 people were affected in southeastern China by the arrival of Typhoon Gaemi, which triggered the first red alert of the year in the country, after causing five deaths and almost 700 injuries in Taiwan.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, 290,000 inhabitants had to be temporarily displaced due to the stormwhich hit the southeastern province of Fujian at around 7:50 p.m. local time (12:50 p.m. in Lisbon) on Thursday, with maximum winds of 118.8 kilometers per hour.
Between Wednesday morning and Friday morning, dozens of localities in Fujian recorded rainfall exceeding 250 millimetres (mm), with some reaching 512.8 mm.
The typhoon is expected to move northwest at around 20 kilometers per hour and weaken as it reaches neighboring Jiangxi province on Friday afternoon. According to storm tracking website Zoom.earth, Gaemi had already dropped to tropical storm level, with winds of 75 kilometers per hour, at 12:30 local time (05:30 in Lisbon).
On the eve of the typhoon and flood season, which typically occurs in the last weeks of July and the first weeks of August, Chinese authorities have called for stepped up prevention and rescue efforts.
Flooding is expected along major river basins such as the Yellow River and Yangtze River, and landslides are expected in mountainous areas.
In addition to the red alert issued by the Central Meteorological Observatory, the Chinese Ministry of Transport raised the emergency alert to the second highest level hours before Gaemi’s arrival.
In Fuzhou, capital of Fujian, All trains were suspended this Fridayas well as high-speed services departing to the province from Guangdong and Zhejiang. More than 200 passenger ships were also cancelled.
Taiwan’s Central Meteorological Agency (CWA) on Friday lifted maritime and land warnings in effect since Tuesday due to the storm, which has so far caused five deaths and 688 injuries of varying severity, most of them (228) in the city of Kaohsiung (south).
According to data from the Central Emergency Operations Command (CEOC), As of Friday, more than 52,700 households in Taiwan remained without electricity and another 24,000 without water supply. something that the island’s leader, William Lai, promised to resolve in the coming hours.
Lai travelled to Kaohsiung this morning to check the impact of the typhoon in mountainous areas and announced grants of up to 20,000 Taiwanese dollars (around 561 euros) for families who suffered flooding of more than half a metre of water.
As for the nine crew members of the Tanzanian cargo ship Fu Shun, which sank off Kaohsiung, authorities managed to rescue four of them, while the search for the other five continues.
Although the worst of the typhoon has passed, the CWA is still warning for “extremely heavy” rainfall in mountainous areas of central and southern Taiwan, where up to 1,800 millimetres of rain has accumulated since Tuesday.
Source: Observadora
