Super Typhoon Yagi slammed into Vietnam’s northern coast on Saturday, killing at least three people, uprooting thousands of trees, sweeping ships and boats out to sea and ripping roofs off homes after wreaking death and destruction in southern China and the Philippines.
Yagi made landfall around midday in Quang Ninh and Haiphong provinces in northern Vietnam with winds exceeding 149 km/h, the Vietnam National Center for Hydrometeorological Forecasting said.
At least three people were killed when the storm ripped tin roofs off homes in Quang Ninh province, rescue services said. Further inland, in Hai Duong province, a man was killed on Friday in the street after strong winds toppled a tree, state media reported.
More than a dozen other people, probably sailors aboard fishing boats, are missing.
In Haiphong, metal roofs and billboards flew across the city in the strong winds and heavy rains brought by the typhoon.
” Scary “
“It’s been years since I’ve seen a typhoon of this magnitude,” Tran Thi Hoa, a 48-year-old Haiphong resident, told AFP.
“It was scary. I stayed inside, having closed all my windows. But the sound of the wind and the rain was incredible,” she said.
Before reaching the mainland, the typhoon uprooted hundreds of trees on Co To Island, off the coast of Quang Ninh. Several office buildings, schools and homes on the island had their roofs blown away by the strong winds.
According to local authorities, this typhoon is the most powerful seen on the island in several decades.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had called on local authorities before the storm to evacuate residents from dangerous areas.
Four airports in the north of the country, including the capital’s Noi Bai International Airport, have been closed and navigation has been banned since Friday.
Evacuations
In southern China, typhoon Yagi left at least three dead and 95 injured the day before, the official Xinhua news agency announced on Saturday.
The tourist island of Hainan, known for its sandy beaches and luxury hotels, was particularly hard hit with heavy rain and wind gusts of over 230 km/h uprooting many trees.
President Xi Jinping has issued “important instructions” following the damage caused by the typhoon in Hainan, Guangdong province and other areas, Xinhua said Saturday.
“Relief efforts must be organised quickly and in large numbers to bring relief to the affected areas,” the agency said.
Some 460,000 people were evacuated on the island, and some 574,000 in the neighbouring province of Guangdong.
The airport in Haikou, the capital of Hainan in the north of the island, will be temporarily closed until Sunday noon, Xinhua said.
Chinese media footage from Hainan and Guangdong showed significant damage.
CCTV broadcast footage of a Hainan hotel with a devastated lobby, broken computers and piles of metal structures on the floor.
The typhoon killed at least 20 people as it passed through the Philippines this week, according to a new report from the Disaster Management Council. Twenty-six people are still missing in the archipelago, the source said, along with 15 crew members from a fishing boat who are missing.
The typhoon then passed within 400 kilometres of Hong Kong on Thursday night, bringing heavy rainfall. The Hong Kong stock market was suspended on Friday and schools were closed, but damage was limited.
Southern China is frequently hit by typhoons in summer and autumn that form in the warm oceans east of the Philippines and Thailand.
But typhoons in the region are forming closer to shore than before, intensifying more quickly and staying over land longer because of climate change, according to a study published in July.