Taiwan authorities today confirmed the death of one person and dozens of injuries following the passage of Typhoon Gaemi, whose strong winds and rain also placed mainland China on high alert.
Taiwan's Central Meteorological Agency (CWA) on Tuesday issued a warning ahead of the imminent arrival of the storm that has led to the cancellation of more than 400 domestic and international flights, the suspension of military exercises and the closure of schools and businesses.
According to the Central Emergency Operations Command (CEOC), a 64-year-old woman was crushed to death due to a falling tree while riding a motorcycle in the city of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan.
Until 14:00 local time (07:00, in Lisbon), the storm caused 58 injuries of varying degrees on the island, as well as around a thousand incidents, most of which were related to falling trees and damage to basic infrastructures and buildings. .
More than 172,000 households have suffered electricity cuts due to the typhoon, which has so far dumped more than 580 millimeters of precipitation on Taiping Mountain in the eastern village of Yilan.
The CEOC reported that the number of people evacuated by 2pm exceeded 4,000, with all towns and cities on the main island of Taiwan operating at the highest alert level.
At 5:30 pm local time (10:30 am in Lisbon) today, Gaemi was around 40 kilometers east of the town of Yilan and was moving in a northwesterly direction at a speed between 12 and 19 kilometers per hour.
The latest available measurements indicated that the storm, which has a radius of around 250 kilometers, was registering winds of 190.8 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 234 kilometers per hour and would enter the super typhoon category.
The President of Taiwan, William Lai, went to the CEOC headquarters this morning and urged people not to leave their homes unless it was "absolutely necessary".
The China Central Meteorological Observatory issued its first red alert this year this morning, predicting that, after passing over Taiwan, the storm will hit Fujian province, in the southeast of the Chinese mainland, during the afternoon or evening today, with the status of typhoon or even super typhoon.
The storm is expected to move northward and its intensity will gradually decrease. Although the typhoon will not pass directly, other eastern regions such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu have also been placed on alert for strong winds or torrential rain.
According to forecasts from the storm tracking platform Zoom.earth, Gaemi will maintain its super typhoon classification for practically the entire time it passes through the northern part of Taiwan, dropping to a "very strong typhoon" and then simply to a typhoon. shortly before hitting the ground at around 2pm local time (7am in Lisbon) today, near Fuzhou, in the Chinese province of Fujian.
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