More than 900,000 people have fled their homes in China, the government said, as an approaching typhoon lashed northern Taiwan and Japan’s remote southwestern islands on Saturday, toppling trees and leaving tens of thousands without power.
Extreme weather has already wreaked havoc on southern and central China this week, with storms leaving at least 39 dead and causing dozens of rivers to overflow and a reservoir dam to burst.
Typhoon Bavi is expected to make landfall early on Sunday around Wenzhou, a metropolis of nearly 10 million people in the eastern province of Zhejiang, where the city government said 887,801 people had been evacuated from their homes by late Friday.
“The proactive, all-out mobilisation, which is sparing no effort or cost, is undertaken entirely to guard against the (worst-case) scenario,” Wenzhou authorities said in a statement.
Residents used wood to reinforce metal shutters protecting shops and taped windows, with Bavi forecast to bring “exceptionally heavy rains” to eastern Zhejiang and northeastern Fujian province, CCTV footage showed.
