By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago
SHANGHAI, China - A typhoon expected to be among the most powerful
storms to hit China in years churned toward the densely populated
coast on Tuesday with 165 mph wind gusts, and the government
evacuated 1.8 million people.
ADVERTISEMENT
The fringes of Typhoon Wipha lashed northern Taiwan, where schools,
offices and the stock market closed. A construction worker was
killed when the storm's winds knocked down scaffolding, Taiwan's
Disaster Relief Center said.
City authorities ordered schools closed Wednesday in Shanghai, a
city of more than 20 million and China's financial hub. Chinese
state-run television showed families being evacuated from fishing
boats and other vessels. Shopkeepers stacked sand bags to prevent
flooding as drains clogged amid torrential rains.
The typhoon, whipping up waves up to 36 feet high, was moving
northwest toward the Chinese mainland.
By midnight local time, the typhoon appeared to be weakening and
looked likely to hit land early Wednesday further south of Shanghai
than originally forecast, the official Xinhua News Agency reported,
citing local meteorologists.
Wipha, a woman's name in Thai, was upgraded from a tropical storm
Monday. With wind gusts of up to 165 mph, local meteorological
officials said earlier it could be the most destructive storm to
hit the Shanghai area in years.
"The typhoon is very likely to develop into the worst one in recent
years," said a man who answered the phone at the city's
meteorological bureau. As is common with Chinese officials, the man
identified himself only by his surname, Fu.
Shanghai and the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian to the
south issued typhoon warnings requiring all vessels to return to
shore or change course to avoid the storm, the official Xinhua News
Agency said.
It said that 1.8 million people living in coastal or low-lying
areas of Shanghai, Zhejiang and Fujian had been evacuated.
The deadliest storm to hit the China coast in recent years was
Typhoon Winnie in 1997, which killed 236 people. Typhoon Rananim,
with winds of more than 100 mph, was the strongest typhoon to hit
the Chinese mainland since 1956, killing nearly 200 people.
___
Associated Press writer Annie Huang contributed to this report from
Taipei.
