TAIPEI // Taiwan cancelled more than 100 flights and shut schools and offices on Thursday as the island braced for a direct hit from Super Typhoon Nepartak, the first major tropical storm of the season.
The typhoon was packing gusts of up to 245 kilometres an hour as it rumbled towards the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung, where it was expected to make landfall early on Friday, according to Taiwan’s central weather bureau.
At 10am GMT on Thursday, the typhoon was 210 kilometres east-southeast of Taitung.
“As the typhoon has been slowing its pace, we now forecast it could make landfall sometime between 5am and 6am (local time) Friday,” said an official at the bureau.
The storm is expected to dump torrential rain on the whole island with mountainous areas forecast to be deluged with up to 900 millimetres, potentially triggering landslides that have in the past claimed hundreds of lives.
Residents should “keep an eye out on possible landslides, falling rocks, flash water flooding,” the weather bureau said.
All fishing boats had been called back to port as waves as high as 14 metres – according to television reports – battered the eastern coast.
President Tsai Ing-wen said preventive evacuation would play a significant role in managing fallout from the storm, while defence minister Feng Shih-kuan said his ministry had “prepared for the worst”.
The ministry said it had deployed nearly 2,500 soldiers around the island, while more than 35,000 were on standby to help with evacuations and disaster relief. Shelters had been set up across the island.
Meanwhile, about 200 people had been moved from their homes in Hualien county and the southern cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung. Taitung county was also expected to start evacuating residents in villages and settlements most at risk of mudslides.
* Agence France-Presse
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