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Typhoon Krathon has so far left two dead, one missing and 219 injured on the island.
Typhoon Krathon made landfall in Kaohsiung, a major port city in southern Taiwan, on Thursday
and continued to advance through the southern region of the island with wind gusts of up to 136.8 kilometers per hour (km/h), Taiwan’s Central Meteorological Agency (CWA) reported.
The storm made landfall just after noon in the south of this city of 2.7 million inhabitants, whose authorities issued an emergency evacuation alert minutes before the arrival of the eye of the storm.
The message stressed that Krathon would bring “destructive winds” and recommended that residents take shelter indoors “as quickly as possible,” avoiding temporary buildings or houses with metal roofs.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai said on Monday that coastal areas of the city were suffering from the “worst weather conditions”, with wind gusts reaching level 12 out of 17 on the Beaufort scale.
“Many citizens are riding motorcycles in these extreme weather conditions, which is very dangerous,” he warned, urging citizens to “avoid leaving home unless absolutely necessary.”
According to images broadcast by local television, the typhoon has torn off roofs, knocked over cargo containers and caused multiple damages to vehicles and infrastructure in Kaohsiung, while causing landslides and flooding in the northern city of Keelung.
Affected by the typhoon
Krathon, whose intensity experts say was underestimated in the hours before it hit Taiwan, has so far left two dead, one missing and 219 injured on the island , which has ordered the closure of government offices, schools and financial markets for the second day in a row.
At 5:30 p.m. local time (09:30 GMT), the storm was located about 30 kilometers northeast of downtown Kaohsiung and was moving north at a speed of 6 to 4 km/h.
With a radius of 180 kilometers, the storm is bringing with it sustained winds of 108 km/h and gusts of up to 136.8 km/h.
So far, 10,208 people from fourteen counties or cities have had to be evacuated due to the typhoon , which has also caused power outages in more than 240,000 homes.
According to the storm tracking platform Zoom.earth, Krathon will advance through the western half of Taiwan and will quickly weaken to become a “low remnant” storm on Friday night.
Taiwan is particularly sensitive to natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons: at the end of July, Typhoon Gaemi left at least 10 dead, more than 900 injured and millions in losses in the island’s agricultural and fishing sector. EFE
