Houston Community News >> Typhoon Krosa Pounds Taiwan

10/6/2007 TAIPEI (Reuters) - TYPHOON Krosa pounded Taiwan with powerful winds and torrential rain on Saturday, injuring at least 17 people, forcing shops and offices to close and disrupting air, rail and road travel. In Taipei, strong winds uprooted trees and swept away billboards, while streets in some suburban areas were flooded.

Electricity supplies were disrupted in more than 500,000 households island-wide, authorities said, with some office buildings having repeated blackouts in the afternoon.

Most domestic trains, ferries and flights were cancelled, and about 186 international flights were also suspended.

At least 17 people were slightly injured by falling trees or signs and one man suffered a broken bone when he was swept into a rock by large waves, the National Fire Agency, which coordinates rescue work, said.

However, the worst may be yet to come, the central weather bureau warning the typhoon was likely to be strongest between late Saturday and early Sunday.

Krosa set to hit China

Authorities in China on Saturday issued a flood alert, as it braced for Krosa.

Local meteorological offices said the typhoon was expected to hit the Chinese mainland between Sunday midnight and Monday noon.

Authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang ordered officials back to work from their National Day vacation to prepare for the storm, the China Daily reported.

Disaster authorities said the storm drenched all of northern Taiwan, including the capital Taipei, keeping people indoors as work, classes and scheduled events were cancelled for safety reasons.

'The wind is tremendous here, and we've lost power,' said Mr Chuang Min-hsiang, of Taitung. 'We're all at home doing work to protect ourselves from the typhoon.'

EVA Airways, Taiwan's No. 2 international carrier, has cancelled most of its afternoon flights, according to TV reports.

A service staff member at Taipei's Kaohsiung airport said more than 10 international flights had been cancelled on Saturday.

Northern Taiwan's main port in Keelung was closed at 6am.

British typhoon tracking system Tropical Storm Risk (http: tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/) called Krosa a category 4 typhoon.

Krosa was 160 km off the coast of Taiwan as of 10am Singapore time on Saturday after picking up strength throughout the week, and was packing sustained winds of 184kmh and gusts of up to 227kmh, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau reported.

Tropical Storm Risk said Krosa was expected to weaken to a category 3 storm by early Sunday morning and a category 2 storm by the middle of Sunday, when it was expected to brush Zhejiang province of China, before heading north-east towards Fukuoka.

Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday that tours during its weeklong holidays have been called off in Zhejiang's coastal area and all vacationers have been evacuated from the islands.

Likewise, neighboring Fujian province has cancelled coastal tours and dispersed tourists to safer areas. Fishing boats there have also been called back to harbour.

Krosa is the 15th storm of the season.

Typhoons regularly hit China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan from August through the end of the year, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific or the South China Sea before weakening over land.

(Contributed by Reuters)