Typhoon Megi left at least seven people dead at a temple complex as it skirted Taiwan, leaving a busload of Chinese tourists missing and causing power outages before heading toward Xiamen in China’s southern Fujian province.
The deaths occurred when a house next to a Buddhist temple in Suao township in Yilan county was covered in a landslide, the National Fire Agency in Taipei said in a statement on its website. Nineteen Chinese tourists, their driver and guide were missing as of 9 p.m. local time yesterday, the agency said.
The China National Tourism Administration said yesterday that a mainland tour guide died as a result of the storm and a tourist was injured. Megi dumped as much as 1,195 millimeters (47 inches) of rain in northeast Taiwan since Oct. 21, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said on its website.
Megi was about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Xiamen at 8 a.m. local time today, moving north at 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) per hour toward the coast of Fujian province, according to the Hong Kong Observatory. It is projected to make landfall in southern China at about 2 p.m. local time with winds of 130 kph, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.
In China, where floods and landslides have killed more than 2,000 people this year, more than 160,000 people were evacuated in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. In Shantou, eastern Guangdong, 42 flights were canceled affecting 4,000 passengers, the agency reported.
Roads Closed
Megi, which left 26 people dead in the Philippines earlier this week, trapped about 400 people in vehicles as roads were closed, Taiwan’s Cabinet said in a faxed statement yesterday. Search teams reached all 53 people who remained trapped at 7 p.m., the fire agency said later.
In the northeastern coastal county of Yilan, 2,742 people were evacuated. A total of 2,987 households were still without power in Taiwan at 9 p.m. yesterday and agricultural losses have reached about NT$46 million ($1.5 million), the fire agency said.
In Hong Kong, which had braced for a possible direct hit, the city’s observatory canceled all storm signals at 8:40 p.m. local time last night.
The U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center is also tracking two tropical depressions over the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines.
Tropical Depression 16W was about 1,700 kilometers east of Manila at 2 a.m. Philippines time today, according to the latest advisory. It is forecast to become a tropical storm within two days and a typhoon in five days as it heads north toward the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Kyushu.
Tropical Depression 17W was located northeast of Saipan and moving northwest, away from land.
In the northeastern Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Giri weakened as it made landfall on Myanmar’s west coast late yesterday, the U.S. center said. The storm crossed the coast near the city of Sittwe and shortly after midnight was heading inland carrying winds of 148 kph, the center said in its final advisory. Giri is forecast to weaken throughout today
