HONG KONG (AP) — A powerful typhoon made landfall on the Chinese tropical vacation island of Hainan Friday after it swept south of Hong Kong, bringing many aspects of life in the region to a halt and 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 245 kph (152 mph) near its center — made landfall in the province’s Wenchang city at around 4:20 p.m. It is expected to sweep toward 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 neighboring Guangdong province on Friday night.
Ahead of the afternoon landfall, nearly 420,000 residents were relocated in Hainan, and so were more than half a million people in Guangdong, state media said.
The storm brought heavy rain across most of Hainan and some areas faced power outages. Strong winds buffeted the province’s iconic coconut trees. People built sandbag barriers outside buildings to guard against possible floods and reinforced their windows with tape, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
State media said classes, work, transportation and businesses had been suspended in parts of the province as early as Wednesday evening. Some tourist attractions were closed and all flights at three airports on the island were expected to be 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. Beihai city suspended work, classes, businesses and transportation on Friday, local media said.
Earlier, trading on the stock market, bank services and schools were halted in Hong Kong on Friday after the city’s weather authority raised a No. 8 typhoon signal for Yagi, the third-highest warning under the city’s weather system.
Yagi forced more than 270 people to seek refuge at temporary government shelters and led to cancellations of more than 100 flights in the city. Nine people were injured and treated at hospitals. Heavy rain and strong winds felled dozens of trees.
Yagi was 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 2 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.
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Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.
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