China News: Typhoon Muifa

Shanghai is spared as typhoon tears across China

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CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

THE POWERFUL typhoon Muifa veered away from China’s biggest city, Shanghai, yesterday but was on a collision course for Shangdong on the densely populated east coast. The evacuation involved hundreds of thousands of residents.

Authorities piled up sandbags and over 60,000 boats were secured in ports along the coast, including near the major city of Qingdao, in advance of Muifa’s arrival, bringing with it torrential rain and high-speed gusts of wind.

Some 610,000 residents were evacuated in the coastal areas, which are among China’s wealthiest as well as the most densely populated.

Typhoon season brings tremendous disruption to the region and can also cause terrible damage – Typhoon Saomai killed at least 460 people in east China in 2006 and forced the evacuation of over 1.5 million people.

Hundreds of flights in eastern China were cancelled over the weekend and Typhoon Muifa was expected to make landfall near the port of Weihai early today before heading to the port of Dalian and nearby areas, national and local meteorological centres said.

China’s key oil production base, the Shengli oilfield, is near Weihai and workers were evacuated yesterday.

So far the impact of the typhoon has been relatively limited, although meteorologists have warned that Muifa had the potential to become one of the worst storms to hit China in years.

Du Changwen, head of the provincial water resources bureau, said that if the rainfall brought by Muifa exceeded 100mm, water in 50 of Shandong’s 140 large reservoirs was in danger of overflowing.

National flood control and disaster monitors met in Beijing to decide on a regional response to the threat. Two other provinces in danger from the typhoon, Jilin and Heilongjiang, were ordered to intensify emergency measures .

They were told to beef up disaster relief efforts as the typhoon heads towards them. The province of Hebei, which is near Beijing, has reported rainfall caused by the typhoon.

In Zhejiang province, rain and strong winds triggered by the typhoon brought down 169 houses and destroyed the harvest of 3,500 tons of crops.

In Shanghai, the typhoon failed to make a direct hit, but heavy rains forced the cancellation of 190 flights, major bridges were closed, power was cut to some areas after power lines were downed, and gusts of wind blew away advertising hoardings.

Hong Kong Observatory said Muifa was moving northwest at about 23km/hour over the East China Sea and would weaken to a tropical storm after making landfall.

The typhoon caused winds of up to 137km/hour in South Korea, and authorities there issued a tidal wave and flood warning along the country’s west and south coast and urged steps to prevent possible flooding.

They also warned that the typhoon could cause damage in central parts of the country, including the capital Seoul.

It was also forecast to bring heavy rain and disruption to impoverished North Korea, which has already suffered heavy weather this year, resulting in massive flooding that has damaged large areas of farmland and tens of thousands of homes.

Last week, Typhoon Muifa killed four people in the Philippines, although it did not make landfall there.

Additionally, in Japan there were 27 injuries in Okinawa on Friday, along with power cuts, according to theKyodo news agency.

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