Typhoon Gaemi heads for China after fatal rampage across Taiwan and Philippines

Typhoon Gaemi took aim at China after tearing across the Philippines and Taiwan, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, flooding streets and leaving at least five people dead.

After passing south of densely populated Taipei, the storm’s eye headed out over the Taiwan Strait early Thursday, lumbering to the northwest. It was expected to approach China’s coast with winds of 129 kilometres per hour, according to the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center, down from 175km/h as it cut across Taiwan.

The Philippines’ central bank suspended currency trading for a second day in Gaemi’s wake, while offices, schools and stock trading were closed in Taiwan. Chuck Watson, a disaster modeller for Enki Research, said the storm could cause $US25 billion ($38b) in damages and losses in Taiwan alone.

Taiwan had braced for the impact. Well before landfall, the storm lashed the island with powerful gusts of wind and rain. At least one person was dead, more than 50 were injured, and hundreds were evacuated from disaster-prone areas, according to authorities and local media reports.

Schools, offices and tourist sites closed across Taiwan while air travellers rushed to board overseas flights.

Fishing boats were recalled to port amid turbulent seas while shelters were opened in vulnerable areas, particularly in Taiwan’s mountainous centre and east that are prone to landslides and flooding.

Streets were inundated in numerous towns and cities.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the main chipmaker for Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., said it was taking routine precautions for its local fabrication facilities.

In mainland China, coastal provinces near Gaemi’s path have begun taking precautionary measures, including evacuating tourists from island resorts, asking ships to take shelter and announcing suspensions of passenger train services. Heavy rain is also affecting inland areas, resulting in the suspension of open-pit mining in some coal production hubs.

In the Philippines, at least four people died in a landslide, and more than half a million people were displaced as the storm compounded monsoon rains, according to authorities. But it may be days before the full human and economic cost to the archipelago becomes clear.

Gaemi, called Carina in the Philippines, did not make landfall in that archipelago but enhanced its seasonal monsoon rains.

They set off at least a dozen landslides and floods over five days, killing at least eight and displacing 600,000 people, the country’s disaster risk mitigation agency said.

The bodies of a pregnant woman and three children were dug out on Wednesday morning after a landslide buried a rural shanty in the mountainside town of Agoncillo in Batangas province.

A spokesman for the Philippine coast guard, Rear Admiral Armando Balilo, said they have been overwhelmed with pleas from residents in the capital to be rescued. Some waited on rooftops.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered authorities to speed up efforts to deliver food and other aid to isolated rural villages.

“People there may not have eaten for days,” Marcos said in a televised emergency meeting.

In the densely populated region around the Philippine capital, government work and school classes were suspended after rains flooded many areas.

In Marikina city in the eastern fringes of the Manila region, strong currents on a major river swept away a steel cargo container, refrigerators and tree trunks, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.

“Stay calm. We’re doing everything we can. The local government won’t leave you behind,” mayor Jeannie Sandoval of Malabon, speaking on the DZRH radio network, told one alarmed mother.

The Philippine coast guard said more than 350 passengers and cargo truck drivers and workers were stranded in seaports after ferries and cargo ships were prohibited from venturing into rough seas.