Typhoon Doksuri lashed the northern Philippines starting late Tuesday, cutting power to much of Cagayan province, while Taiwan and China issued new alerts and stepped up preparations for the storm.
(Bloomberg) — Typhoon Doksuri lashed the northern Philippines starting late Tuesday, cutting power to much of Cagayan province, while Taiwan and China issued new alerts and stepped up preparations for the storm.
“We’re being pummeled here by strong winds and heavy rains,” Cagayan province Governor Manuel Mamba told DZBB radio. He said there were no casualties reported so far, with the province having evacuated 12,000 people, mostly from coastal areas.
Still, power remains out in much of the province, and authorities have yet to assess damage to farms and regional infrastructure, he said. Radio DZBB reported that strong winds had cut power, destroyed houses and felled trees in Cagayan.
The eye of the storm made landfall over Fuga Island in Cagayan province at 3:10 am, according to the Philippine weather bureau.
Doksuri is packing sustained winds of 175 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 215 kilometers per hour, according to the bureau, which is now describing Doksuri as a typhoon. The bureau had earlier categorized the storm as a super typhoon, a designation which Hong Kong authorities continue to use.
Over the next few hours, Doksuri is expected to exhibit a “wobbling motion,” which means another landfall over northwestern Cagayan isn’t ruled out, before it heads towards the sea south of Taiwan, the Philippines’ bureau said. It forecast it would cross the Taiwan Strait and make landfall in Fujian on Friday morning.
The massive storm has already entered the coastal waters of Bashi Channel, posing a threat to Taiwan’s Tainan, Kaohsiung, Taitung, Pingtung, and Hengchun Peninsula, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau.
Taiwan issued a land alert warning for Tainan, Kaohsiung, Taitung, Pingtung, and the Hengchun Peninsula, and a sea alert warning for vessels navigating and operating in the Bashi Channel, waters to the southeast and northeast of Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait and waters near Dongsha Island.
China’s National Meteorological Center issued an orange alert for Doksuri, it said on its website. That’s one higher than the earlier yellow alert. China has a four-tier color-coded system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
The Hong Kong Observatory said it will issue the typhoon warning signal number 1 some time today. That’s the lowest warning on a scale of five.
The center of the storm was about 330km off Taiwan’s Eluanbi, moving northwest at 12 km per hour hour as of 2 a.m. Taipei time on July 26, Taiwan’s weather bureau said.
The Philippines had already canceled flights and shipping while it braced for Doksuri, which threatened parts of the nation that had already been suffering from flooding as a result of the monsoon. Cagayan produces rice and corn, and hosts an economic zone.
In October last year, more than 100 people died from floods and landslides triggered by storm Nalgae, which displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines.
In Taiwan, the typhoon is being watched closely in case it affects Taiwan’s largest LNG import terminal, Yung-An, or key oil refineries. The island is also home to plants making some of the world’s most advanced computer chips, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it’s undertaking routine precautions to avoid disruptions.
“I have specifically asked government ministries to prepare for the typhoon,” Taiwan’s Premier Chen Chien-jen said earlier this week in a post on Facebook. “Let’s work together at the central and local levels to minimize the impact and damage,” he said, noting that Taiwan hasn’t seen a typhoon landfall for nearly four years.
Taiwan, which on Monday started large-scale annual five-day military drills, canceled plans to use Fengnian airport on the east of the island due to safety concerns, according to the Ministry of National Defense. The air force had planned to use the civilian airport for takeoff and landing drills for the first time.
–With assistance from Foster Wong, Sing Yee Ong, Ditas Lopez, Dominic Lau and Olivia Tam.
(Adds details on China’s alert from first paragraph.)
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