Typhoon Doksuri destroys power lines, closes factories as it rips into China
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The storm is moving northwest at 25kmh to 30kmh and will land in Xiamen and Hui’an along the coast of Fujian.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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FUJIAN – Typhoon Doksuri swept into China’s south-eastern Fujian province on Friday, unleashing heavy rain and violent gusts of wind that whipped power lines sparking fires, uprooted trees and forced factories and shopping malls to shut.
The second strongest typhoon to land in Fujian
There were no immediate reports of injuries or fatalities, unlike Meranti when it caused at least 11 deaths after it made landfall near the port city of Xiamen.
Doksuri’s wind speed was clocked at 137 kmh as of 1pm local time, according to the National Meteorological Center.
Hourly rainfall in Xiamen, Quanzhou and Putian exceeded 50mm, according to the China Meterological Administration (CMA).
“The whole of Xiamen didn’t go to work this morning,” a Xiamen resident surnamed Zhuang told Reuters.
“There are no cars on the roads, and factories and shopping malls are closed. Guess people are scared after Meranti previously.”
Social media video showed electrical power lines sparking and bursting into flames as winds thrashed Jinjiang, a city of two million people, while in Quanzhou massive trees were uprooted and left in the middle of roads.
A woman’s voice in the background of one video could be heard shouting, “so many fallen tress. Some are broken down. It is a mess. This is too much. It is horrible.”
Social media videos showed strong winds blowing a large incense burner across the ground at a temple in Jianjiang and residents made makeshift barriers at doors to stop rain from flooding into apartments.
Power and water cuts were experienced in some areas of Jinjiang and Quanzhou, residents told Reuters.
Doksuri, the second typhoon to make landfall in China in less than two weeks, will move northwards where 10 provinces will experience heavy rain, weather forecasters predict.
It is expected to continue to move in a north-westerly direction with gradually weakening intensity, China’s CMA said.
As it moves north, it will reach the agricultural province of Anhui, dumping rain on its developing corn, rice, soybean and cotton crops. Analysts say it should weaken by then but are watching closely for potential crop damage.
Typhoon Doksuri has already left a wake of death and destruction in its path as it moved from the Philippines across southern Taiwan.
The storm toppled trees and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes in southern Taiwan, prompting the authorities to shut businesses for a second day on Friday and warn of extreme winds, landslides and floods.
Doksuri was categorised at the second-strongest typhoon level by Taiwan’s weather bureau.
More than 300 domestic and international flights were scrapped because of the typhoon, while the storm also caused numerous flight cancellations in the Philippines earlier this week.
In the northern Philippine province of Cagayan, where Doksuri made landfall as a super typhoon earlier, nearly 16,000 people were evacuated.
As many as 36 people were killed during Doksuri’s transit off the northern Philippines.
Although more than 180,000 people in the South-east Asian country have been affected by the storm, the devastation appears much less than in October 2022, when more than 100 people died from floods and landslides triggered by storm Nalgae, which also displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
There also appears to have been relatively limited damage to the country’s agriculture.
The typhoon caused an estimated 53.1 million pesos (S$1.29 million) of damage to crops, primarily for rice and corn, according to its agriculture department.
Taiwan estimates its agricultural losses from the typhoon to be about NT$1.5 million (S$64,000). REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
