Typhoon Yagi barreled toward Vietnam on Saturday, packing powerful winds and torrential rain that killed at least one person before it made landfall. Earlier, the storm smashed into southern China, where about one million people were evacuated and at least two died.
Later Saturday, the typhoon is expected to become the most powerful storm on record to strike northern Vietnam. It is forecast to make landfall near the coastal city of Haiphong before passing Hanoi according to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. At least one person was killed in Hanoi, the capital, on Friday, according to state media.
The storm was equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 132 miles per hour as it moved west in the Gulf of Tonkin on Saturday morning, the center said. Since losing strength over southern China, the storm has rapidly intensified as it moves toward a “historical landfall,” it said.
Yagi was the strongest typhoon in a decade to hit Hainan, where two people died according to Chinese state media. The storm shook high rises, blew out windows, overturned trucks, felled trees and flooded homes, state media reported. The storm also washed more than two tons of rocks from the ocean onto the sea wall in Xuwen County in Guangdong Province, according to China Central Television, the state broadcaster.
The Chinese authorities called Yagi “extremely destructive.” More than 830,000 customers lost power and dozens of people were injured in Hainan after the storm made landfall there on Friday. About a million people were evacuated in Hainan and Guangdong provinces.
More rain and strong winds were forecast in southern China on Saturday. China’s National Meteorological Center said that up to 16 inches of more rain would fall in provinces including in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi in a day.
Parts of Vietnam were expected to receive over 18 inches of rain, the country’s National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said. Vietnamese meteorologists raised alarm about the risk of landslides, floods in small rivers and low-lying areas, and storm surges in coastal areas.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam on Saturday ordered provinces and cities in northern Vietnam, including Hanoi, a city of 8.6 million people, to make storm preparations, according to state media. The directive included closing schools.
“Strong winds in Hanoi will have a major impact on people’s lives,” said Nguyen Van Huong, head of the meteorological center’s forecast department, according to state media. He advised people to avoid leaving their homes, state media reported.
The authorities in the city of Nam Dinh, about 45 miles south of Hanoi, evacuated more than 1,000 people from old apartment buildings ahead of Yagi’s expected arrival, according to the local news media.
The storm also disrupted travel in Vietnam. The country’s Civil Aviation Authority suspended flights that had been scheduled at four airports on Saturday.
Yagi, which formed last weekend in the Philippine Sea, killed at least 20 people in the Philippines. It then intensified rapidly in the South China Sea and became a super typhoon, a tropical cyclone in the western North Pacific with winds of at least 150 m.p.h.
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