Flights And Rail Connections Suspended In Taiwan Due To Typhoon Usagi

Taiwanese airlines and local train and ferry operators suspended some services today due to the imminent arrival of Typhoon Usagi.

The Taiwan Central Meteorological Agency (CWA) has issued a typhoon warning for the areas of Pingtung and Taitung, as well as the city of Kaohsiung, a port city in southern Taiwan.

At 09:15 (01:15 in Lisbon), Usagi was about 180 kilometers southwest of Cape Eluanbi on the southern tip of Taiwan, moving in a northwesterly direction at a speed between eight and 11 kilometers per hour (km/h). h), indicated the CWA.

The latest available measurements indicated that the storm, which has a radius of 120 kilometers, had sustained winds of 108 km/h at the center and gusts of up to 136.8 km/h.

CWA meteorologist Wu Wan-hua said Usagi will slow down over the next few hours as it approaches southwestern Taiwan, where it could make landfall as early as this evening (local time).

Wu added at a news conference that the storm will continue to decrease in intensity as it approaches Taiwan, becoming a tropical depression when it makes landfall or heads out to sea on Saturday afternoon.

For now, some Taiwanese airlines, including Mandarin Airlines and Uni Air, have suspended several flights between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Taitung (South) Airport for Friday, while ferry and ferry services trains were canceled in the south and east of the island.

According to storm tracking platform Zoom.earth, Usagi hit the northern Philippines on Thursday afternoon as a "very strong typhoon" with winds exceeding 185 km/h, after becoming a "super typhoon." " in the early hours of the same day.

Taiwan is often hit by natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons: earlier this month, Typhoon Kong-ry - the biggest to hit the island in almost 30 years - caused at least three deaths, 690 injuries and millions of dollars in damage to the sector. local agricultural.

In early October, the island was also hit by Typhoon Krathon, which killed four people and injured more than 700, and in mid-July by Typhoon Gaemi, which killed 10 people and injured more than 900.

In the Philippines, Usagi flooded villages, cut electricity and displaced thousands of people before moving away today from the north of the country, which has already been hit by five major storms in less than a month.

A new storm in the Pacific could turn into a powerful typhoon before hitting the Philippine archipelago on Sunday, state forecasts indicate.

In Cagayan province, in the far north of the main Luzon region, a concrete bridge connecting two cities partially collapsed on Thursday. Several other bridges were swallowed by flood waters and were rendered unusable, provincial officials said.

Usagi hit the northeastern Philippines on Thursday, just two days after the departure of the last typhoon, Toraji, which caused flooding and forced more than 82,500 people to leave their homes in the northern provinces.

Many of the homeless were still in emergency shelters when Usagi arrived, according to welfare workers.