Severe tropical storm Ampil pounds Shanghai
Severe tropical storm Ampil, the 10th typhoon of 2018, passed through Shanghai without serious incident on Sunday en route to Jiangsu Province in East China.
The first typhoon to hit Shanghai since 1989, Ampil had ripped up 264 trees and flooded 260 hectares of Chongming Island as of 5 pm Sunday, thepaper.cn reported.
Chongming, a 1,267 square kilometer island at the mouth of the Yangtze River in eastern China, locates at the northernmost area of the provincial-level municipality of Shanghai.
Shanghai authorities issued alerts via Weibo, WeChat, text messages, television and radio. The response team also has begun collecting assessment information, according to the website of Shanghai Meteorological Service.
“We received alerts in advance and have already been prepared for Ampil,” an employee surnamed Wang of Shanghai-based Shenergy Group told the Global Times.
“Our offshore wind generating sets in the Lingang area are operating normally with no casualties in the storm despite gales up to 20 meters a second early this morning,” Wang said.
More than 192,000 Shanghai residents including offshore workers were transferred to safer places as of Sunday noon, according to the city authorities’ official WeChat.
About 400 people were transferred to a temporary shelter in Shanyang Middle School’s indoor stadium on Saturday night.
The air-conditioned shelter provided water and food, including cookies and cup-porridge, and also medical care, the Global Times learned.
Some of the resettled were playing cards and most played with their mobile phones to kill time. They brought their own bedclothes to sleep on the floor as they were not allowed to leave the shelter on Sunday.
Shanghai resident Jia Xing told the Global Times that the daily routine was not especially disrupted by the storm.
“If the condition worsens, I may be allowed to take a break at home,” Jia said.
Ampil originated east of the Philippines on Wednesday and has already caused heavy rain in East China’s Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and Shandong provinces. South China’s Hainan and Guangdong provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were also doused, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.