World’s biggest storm this year slams Asia
CHINA AND PHILIPPINES: 230KM/H WINDS SWAY SKYSCRAPERS
Typhoon Mangkhut sways highrise buildings, snaps trees and destroys crops.
Floods and landslides snap trees, ruin crops, devastate buildings.
Typhoon Mangkhut rocked Hong Kong before striking mainland China yesterday, injuring scores and sending skyscrapers swaying after killing at least 49 people in the Philippines and ripping a swathe of destruction through its agricultural heartland.
The world’s biggest storm this year left large expanses in the north of the main Philippine island of Luzon underwater as fierce winds tore trees from the ground and rain unleashed dozens of landslides. It made landfall on the coast of Jiangmen city, in southern China’s Guangdong province, last night after battering Hong Kong.
Hong Kong weather authorities issued their maximum alert for the storm, which hit the city with gusts of more than 230km/h and left over 100 injured, according to government figures.
As the storm passed south of Hong Kong, trees were snapped in half and roads blocked, while some windows in tower blocks were smashed and skyscrapers swayed, as they are designed to do in intense gales.
The Philippines was just beginning to count the cost of the typhoon, which hit northern Luzon on Saturday, and the death toll jumped to 49 last night as more landslide victims were discovered.
In the town of Baggao, the typhoon demolished houses, tore off roofs and downed power lines. Some roads were cut off by landslides and many remained submerged.
Farms across northern Luzon, which produces much of the nation’s rice and corn, were sitting under muddy floodwater, their crops ruined just a month before harvest.
An average of 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year, killing hundreds of people. The latest victims were mostly people who died in landslides. In addition a woman was swept out to sea in Taiwan.
In Hong Kong, waters surged in the famous Victoria Harbour and coastal fishing villages, from which hundreds of residents were evacuated to storm shelters.
Some roads were waist-deep in water with parts of the city cut off by floods and fallen trees.
In the fishing village of Tai O, where many people live in stilt houses built over the sea, some desperately tried to bail out their inundated homes.
The government warned people to stay indoors but some ventured out to the coast to take photos. Others stayed at home but were terrified by smashing windows in their apartments.
“The entire floor and bed are covered in glass,” one resident told local broadcaster TVB after her bedroom window shattered. “The wind is so strong.”
Almost all flights in and out of Hong Kong were cancelled. Schools in the city will be shut today. On China’s southern coast, more than two million people were evacuated. –