By Go Nakamura, Xihao Jiang and Ella Cao
WENZHOU, China, July 12 (Reuters) – Typhoon Bavi, the most powerful storm to strike mainland China this year, brought heavy rainfall to the eastern coast on Sunday and lashed densely populated cities with violent winds, testing the country’s ability to cope with extreme weather.
Bavi had weakened by Sunday morning to a tropical storm as it pushed inland, but forecasters warned that the France-sized storm system could unleash prolonged and widespread rainfall across eastern and northern China in the coming days.
Nearly 2 million people were evacuated ahead of Bavi’s arrival, mostly in Zhejiang province, an economic and technological powerhouse in the world’s second-largest economy.
Bavi struck Zhejiang’s coastal city of Yuhuan at around 11:20 p.m. (1520 GMT) on Saturday before making a second landfall in Yueqing, part of the city of Wenzhou, at around midnight.
“When it made landfall last night, the winds were very strong,” Yueqing resident Li Liangxing told Reuters. “We could hear roof tiles and tree branches falling. Of course we were scared, but we live by the sea, so we’re used to it.”
Gesturing toward a flooded canal beside his residential compound, Li said he had never seen the water rise so high.
“There used to be a walkway there, but now it’s underwater,” he said.
More than 1,300 trees fell across Yueqing, with more than 700 of them uprooted entirely, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The deepest flooding reached roughly half the height of a vehicle tire.
Emergency crews on Sunday deployed excavators and chainsaws to clear waterlogged streets littered with fallen trees.
In the city’s mountainous north, footage aired by CCTV showed a landslide that sent large boulders tumbling onto a mountain road, while swollen river waters submerged nearby trees.
FLIGHTS, TRAINS DISRUPTED
As it approached China, Bavi passed northern Taiwan on Saturday, bringing strong winds and driving rain across much of the island. The storm dumped nearly 80 cm (31 inches) of rain in one area in the northern county of Miaoli.
Taiwan’s fire department said on Sunday that 134 people had been injured, mainly due to falling off motorbikes, slipping or being struck by objects. It reported no deaths. The transport ministry said 137 international flights had been cancelled on Sunday, along with 62 domestic trips.
The disruption also extended to China’s transport networks. In Zhejiang’s provincial capital, Hangzhou, two major train stations suspended all services and 327 flights were cancelled at Xiaoshan International Airport.
In neighbouring Shanghai, a total of 1,620 train trips and 684 flights were cancelled, state-backed The Paper reported.
As Bavi churns further across China, regions near its path could receive several hundred millimetres of rain in a matter of days, raising the risk of flooding, landslides and urban inundation, said Benjamin Horton, the dean of the School of Energy and Environment at the City University of Hong Kong.
“Even if the storm weakens after landfall, its large circulation can continue to generate destructive weather hundreds of kilometres inland,” he said.
Scientists have warned China could face more extreme weather this year with the expected emergence of the El Nino weather pattern, which can drive up temperatures and shift typhoon tracks westward toward the country’s coast.
“Rapid intensification (of typhoons) reduces preparation time for communities and emergency managers, making these events particularly challenging,” Horton said.
(Reporting by Go Nakamura, Xihao Jiang and Ella Cao in Wenzhou; Additional reporting by Ethan Wang and Daphne Zhang in Beijing and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by William Mallard and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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