A powerful typhoon made landfall on the Chinese tropical holiday island of Hainan on Friday after it swept south of Hong Kong, forcing about a million people in the country’s south to leave their homes.
The Hainan province’s meteorological service said Yagi — earlier packing winds of up to about 245km (152 miles) per hour near its centre — made landfall in the province’s Wenchang city at around 4.20pm. It is expected to sweep towards other parts of the island before moving to the Beibu Gulf, it said.
China’s national meteorological authorities said Yagi was the strongest autumn typhoon to have landed in China. They predicted it would make a second landfall in Xuwen County in neighbouring Guangdong province on Friday night.
Trading on the stock market, bank services and schools were earlier halted in Hong Kong after the city’s weather authority raised a No 8 typhoon signal for Typhoon Yagi, the third-highest warning under the city’s weather system.
Yagi forced more than 250 people to seek refuge at temporary government shelters and led to cancellations of more than 100 flights in the city. Five people were injured and treated at hospitals.
Heavy rain and strong winds overnight felled dozens of trees across the financial hub before the weather gradually calmed on Friday morning. The typhoon signal was downgraded in the afternoon, with public and transportation services slowly resuming.
In Hainan, in southern China, residents had braced for the powerful storm. Nearly 420,000 residents had been relocated in the province.
People built sandbag barriers outside buildings to guard against possible floods and reinforced their windows with tape on Thursday, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
The official China Daily said classes, work, transportation and businesses were suspended in parts of the province as early as Wednesday evening. Some tourist attractions were closed and all flights at its international airport in Haikou city were grounded on Friday.
State broadcaster CCTV said Qinzhou city in Guangxi region also issued a top emergency response alert to guard against the typhoon. It said Yagi is expected to make another landfall somewhere between the region’s Fangchenggang city and the coastal area of northern Vietnam on Saturday afternoon.
Yagi was still a tropical storm when it blew out of the northwestern Philippines into the South China Sea on Wednesday, leaving at least 16 people dead and 17 others missing, mostly in landslides and widespread flooding, and affecting more than two million people in northern and central provinces.
More than 47,600 people were displaced from their homes in Philippine provinces, and classes, work, inter-island ferry services and domestic flights were disrupted for days, including in the densely populated capital region, metropolitan Manila.
