Asia’s most powerful typhoon this year struck northern Vietnam on Saturday, killing at least four people on China’s Hainan Island and the Philippines, the meteorological agency said.
Super Typhoon Yagi made landfall in island districts of northern Vietnam around 1 pm (0600 GMT), packing winds of up to 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph) near its centre, compared with 234 kilometres per hour (145 mph) when it struck Hainan a day earlier.
The government said four people had been killed and 78 injured by the storm as of 5 p.m. At least a dozen people were missing at sea, according to state media.
Typhoon Yagi has already killed at least two people on Hainan, and 16 in the Philippines. The Philippines is the first country to be hit by the typhoon, which formed east of the archipelago earlier this week.
Vietnam’s coastal city of Haiphong, an industrial hub of 2 million people home to factories of foreign multinationals and local carmaker Vinfast, was worst hit with winds gusting up to 90 kilometres per hour.
Widespread power outages occurred in the city on Saturday as the storm approached, officials said, and the situation was similar in at least three other northern provinces.
Strong winds in Haiphong broke windows and waves were up to three metres high when they hit the coast, according to a Reuters witness.
Photos and footage on local media showed metal roofing sheets blown off. The government said thousands of trees were downed and many homes damaged across northern Vietnam.
Earlier, the storm knocked down trees, flooded roads and knocked out power to more than 800,000 homes in Hainan, which has a population of more than 10 million.
Airport closures
Vietnam evacuated more than 50,000 people from coastal cities and deployed 450,000 military personnel, the government said.
It suspended operations at four airports for several hours on Saturday, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai, the busiest in the north, where more than 300 flights were cancelled.
High schools were also closed in 12 northern provinces, including the capital, Hanoi, which has a population of 8.5 million.
Authorities in the capital suspended public transport on buses and its two elevated metro lines on Saturday afternoon, state media reported. The meteorological agency warned of the risk of heavy flooding in the city center.
Hanoi resident Nguyen Manh Quan, 40, said: “The wind is so strong it can blow a person away,” while Dang Van Phuong, 40, said: “I’ve never seen a storm like this, you can’t drive in these winds.”
Scientists say hurricanes are becoming more powerful because of warming oceans caused by climate change.
Last week, Typhoon Shanshan hit southwestern Japan, the most powerful storm to hit the country in decades.
Yagi is named after the Japanese word for goat and the constellation of Capricorn.
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