YILAN, Taiwan: Taiwan braced for the arrival of strengthening Typhoon Gaemi on Wednesday. Financial markets closed, people were given days off and flights were cancelled, while the military went on standby due to forecast torrential rains.
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, according to weather authorities.
They upgraded the storm to a strong typhoon, capable of gusting up to 227 km/h near its center.
After crossing the Taiwan Strait, the storm is expected to reach the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian late Thursday afternoon.
“The next 24 hours will be very challenging,” Taiwan's Prime Minister Cho Jung-tai said at a televised meeting of the emergency response center.
In rural Yilan County, where the typhoon will first make landfall, wind and rain increased in intensity, forcing restaurants to close and most streets to be deserted.
“This could be the most severe typhoon in recent years,” fishing boat captain Hung Chun told Reuters, adding that Suao port in Yilan was full of boats seeking shelter.
“It's heading straight toward the east coast, and if it makes landfall here, the damage would be enormous.”
Work and school holidays were suspended throughout Taiwan, and the streets of the capital Taipei were almost deserted.
The government said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from sparsely populated mountainous areas where there was a high risk of landslides due to “extremely torrential rains.”
Almost all domestic flights and 201 international flights have been cancelled, the Ministry of Transport said.
All rail traffic will be suspended from midday, but a shortened timetable will continue to apply for high-speed connections between northern and southern Taiwan, it said.
However, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and a key supplier to Apple, expects its factories to maintain normal production during the typhoon after making routine preparations.
SOLDIERS ARE THERE
The typhoon is expected to bring up to 1,800 millimeters of rain to some mountain 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.
The typhoon has severely affected this year's Han Kuang War Games, but they have not been cancelled; live-fire exercises are planned for Wednesday on the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait.
The Ministry of Water Resources warned that Gaemi would bring heavy to very intense rainfall across much of China starting Thursday.
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 continue until July 31 and have been intensified by the high humidity of the typhoon, it said.
Gaemi and a southwest monsoon brought heavy rains to the capital region and northern provinces of the Philippines on Wednesday, forcing work and school closures and halting stock and foreign exchange trading. The storm left 12 people dead.
Although typhoons can be very destructive, Taiwan relies on them to replenish water reserves after traditionally drier winters, especially in the south of the country.
