17 killed in Taiwan; over 2 mn evacuated in China as super typhoon Ragasa leaves trail of devastation

Beijing, Sep 24 (PTI) Seventeen people were killed and 32 injured in Taiwan after a barrier lake overflow triggered by heavy rain from super Typhoon Ragasa, while over two million people were evacuated for safety in China’s global manufacturing hub, Guangdong province, on Wednesday.

Stated to be the most powerful storm to hit the Chinese coast, Ragasa is the 18th typhoon of the year, official media here reported.

In eastern Taiwan’s Hualien County, 17 people died and 32 were injured after the barrier lake burst on Tuesday, triggered by the typhoon, local authorities said.

Seventeen people are still missing, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Most of the victims, mainly elderly residents, were found in Guangfu Township in Hualien.   In China’s Guangdong province, which was hit by Ragasa on Wednesday, more than 2.16 million residents had been relocated.

Typhoon Ragasa, with maximum wind force near its centre reaching 40 metres per second, churned ashore at Hailing Island in the city of Yangjiang in Guangdong on Wednesday morning, according to the provincial meteorological observatory.

In Yangjiang City, the landing site of Typhoon Ragasa, 1,038 shelters across the city have been fully opened to the public.

But major cities in the southern province of Guangdong appeared to have escaped largely intact with no casualties reported as of Wednesday afternoon, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

The city of Shenzhen reported wind speeds of around 200km/h - higher than the Super Typhoon Mangkhut of 2018 – but as the storm moved west across the province later in the day, these slackened to around 145km/h as it made landfall near Yangjiang, where some residents reported that power and water supplies had been cut off.

Earlier in the day, even higher wind speeds – of more than 240km/h – were recorded at a local monitoring station in Jiangmen in the west of the province.

By the evening, major cities in the Pearl River Delta had started removing restrictions and downgrading their storm alerts.

According to a social media account run by the China Meteorological Administration, satellite images suggested the storm was weakening on Wednesday afternoon and may be downgraded from “super typhoon” status to a “strong typhoon”. PTI KJV GRS  GRS GRS