Typhoon heads for China

Typhoon Prapiroon roared towards southern China today packing winds of up to 80 mph.

Authorities cancelled train and ferry services and evacuated tens of thousands of people amid warnings of severe destruction.

At noon (5am Irish time) today, the storm was centred 180 miles southeast of Hong Kong, and had turned northwest towards southern China’s Guangzhou province at about nine miles per hour, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.

Already blamed for six deaths in the Philippines, Prapiroon was expected to make landfall later today or early tomorrow. Authorities evacuated 65,000 people from parts of Guangdong and the neighbouring island province of Hainan, and ferry and railway services linking the two have been suspended.

About 53,200 boats had returned into ports on Hainan, which lies about 370 miles southwest of Hong Kong, and had been ordered recalled from Guangdong, official media reported. Rescue teams throughout the area have been ordered on alert for floods and landslides.

Prapiroon is “as strong, if not stronger” than an earlier storm, Bilis, which sparked floods and landslides that killed more than 600 people in southern China last month, Gao Shuanzhu, a senior official at the China’s national observatory was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency yesterday.

Strong winds and heavy rains were forecast from today until Saturday for large parts of Guangdong and Hainan, China’s southernmost island and a key tourist destination.

In Hong Kong, at least one person was reported injured yesterday when empty shipping containers were toppled by high winds at a container terminal.

In another incident, a cargo vessel ran aground on an island off the west of Hong Kong amid the storm, a spokesman from the Government Flying Service said. Rescuers have saved 23 crew members but there was no immediate information on injuries or deaths, spokesman Jack Chak said.

Ferry service in the city was disrupted and some flights out of its international airport were either cancelled or diverted to other airports because of winds gusting up to 38mph.

Philippine authorities said two other people were missing following lightning storms and flooding caused by Prapiroon, which struck the country as a tropical storm. About 15,000 others were evacuated as parts of the northern Philippines remained inundated.

Prapiroon, named after the Thai rain god, is the region’s eighth major storm of the season. It comes in the wake of last week’s Typhoon Kaemi, which killed at least 35 people in China and left dozens missing in flooding and landslides.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued a €3.7m appeal to provide food, tents, and quilts for 240,000 people left homeless by floods unleashed by typhoon downpours.

This year’s typhoon season started unusually early and storms have already killed more than 1,460 people, mainly in the densely populated southeastern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Jiangxi.

Chinese officials estimate more than one million houses have been damaged and millions of acres of farmland and forests destroyed.