Schools and businesses across Taiwan were shut Saturday as the powerful storm moved westward over the island. Taiping Mountain, in Yilan County on the island’s northeast side, got 4.2 feet of rain in less than 48 hours, the Central Weather Bureau said. That's as much as the area normally receives in half a year, officials said.
"Extreme torrential rain," defined as 1.6 feet of precipitation in 24 hours, was reported in all parts of Taiwan, except for the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang counties and certain parts of Taipei. The wind was so strong it reportedly blew a cargo train in Nanao in Yilan County off the tracks and overturned it. In Kaohsiung, a 880-pound Buddha statue was blown from its pedestal, the Central News Agency said.
Among the dead were a young girl and her mother, who were swept out to sea; the girl’s twin sister was also missing, the agency reported. A man was swept down a river to his death in the central part of the island, and a firefighter who was trying to clear a downed tree from a road was killed by a drunk driver, the agency said. Another man was killed by a falling signboard, as was a motorcyclist who ran into a fallen tree.
More than 100 people were injured by falling trees or flying objects, the agency said. Trees were upturned across the island, and mudslides were reported in some mountain areas.
At one point following landfall, some 3.22 million households were without electricial power, authorities said -- the biggest outage ever attributable to a typhoon in Taiwan. By midafternoon, power had been restored to about half of those people, with 1.68 million still without service.
Train and ferry services were suspended, and all 279 domestic flights were canceled Saturday, as well as at least 37 international flights as winds up to 90 mph were reported at Taipei's Taoyuan airport.
Huge waves pounded fishing ports on the island’s eastern side as the storm approached Friday. Soldiers had evacuated some residents from areas that were expected to be hardest hit.
The storm was moving toward the Chinese mainland and bringing tropical-storm force winds to the eastern seaboard.
Authorities in southeast China ordered the evacuation of more than 163,000 people and ships back to port ahead of the typhoon, which was expected to hit Fujian province on Saturday night. More than 7,000 soldiers and police were on standby, provincial authorities said.
source: latimes.com
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