Highways were closed, all flights were cancelled at Shanghai’s two main airports and residents of the east coast, one of the country’s most populated areas, were evacuated, city authorities said.
Shanghai, China’s economic capital, was hit on Monday morning, September 16, by Typhoon Bebinca, the strongest to make landfall there since 1949, with strong winds and torrential rains causing flight cancellations and the evacuation of residents.
Typhoon Bebinca, which first passed through Japan, made landfall in Shanghai around 7:30 a.m. local time.
“The maximum wind speed near the center of the typhoon was 42 meters per second at the time of landfall,” making it “the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Shanghai since 1949,” according to Chinese television, specifying that it thus surpasses that of that year, Typhoon Gloria.
Call for vigilance
With the typhoon’s arrival coinciding with the Mid-Autumn Festival, a public holiday in the country, the railway operator expected passengers to make 74 million trips during the holiday, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. The Ministry of Disaster Management had therefore called on officials to be vigilant, warning of “high mobility” of the population.
The Ministry of Water Resources had launched level four (the lowest) emergency operations on Saturday for flood risks in Shanghai and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, according to Xinhua.
Shanghai authorities have urged residents to take the best possible precautions against the typhoon’s effects “at high altitudes” and in “transport, infrastructure and agriculture.”
