Cleanup after super typhoon hits
SHANGHAI: The financial hub of Hong Kong began clearing up yesterday after being battered by one of the strongest typhoons in recent years.
After passing the northern tip of the Philippines, Super Typhoon Mangkhut, with hurricaneforce winds well over 200kmh, skirted south of Hong Kong and neighbouring Macau, before making landfall in China.
Parts of Hong Kong and Macau were severely flooded, though there were no immediate reports of fatalities. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, said four people had been killed in Guangdong, China’s most populous province of over 100 million residents.
The state broadcaster also said flood warnings had been issued for 38 rivers in the neighbouring region of Guangxi, while 12 coastal monitoring stations reported their biggestever waves. It also said more than 13,300ha of farmland had been damaged.
As many as 2.45 million people in Guangdong province had been relocated , the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The China Meteorological Administration forecast the storm to hit the regions of Guizhou, Chongqing and Yunnan yesterday.
Across Hong Kong, authorities strived to clear roads of debris, including toppled trees and bamboo scaffolding.
Some buildings had many windows smashed after a day in which some of the city’s skyscrapers had swayed with the ferocious gusts.
Stock and financial markets opened as normal yesterday in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Some transport services remained suspended, although flights in the region were slowly resuming after a shutdown on Sunday which stranded many thousands of passengers.
In Macau, badly hit by a super typhoon last year, authorities were much more prepared this time, ordering casinos to close as the storm approached.
Casinos were operational again early yesterday though authorities were still struggling to restore power to some of the 20,000 households that suffered power cuts.
In the Phillipines, hopes of finding survivors in the rubble of a huge landslide faded yesterday as rescuers in a remote mountainous region struggled to reach dozens of people feared trapped, two days after Mangkhut struck.
Some 300 police, soldiers, firefighters, and volunteers armed mostly with hand tools raced to remove rocks, mud, debris and drain water from collapsed buildings, hoping to find some signs of life after 12 bodies were pulled out.
The village of Ucab in the picturesque Cordillera region was hit by one of 50 landslides triggered by heavy rains brought by Mangkhut, which has killed at least 54 people in the Phillipines.
Only three people have been rescued in Ucab, with 55 missing.