Typhoon Krathon kills and leaves thousands affected

Typhoon Krathon swept across southern Taiwan on Thursday, bringing destructive winds, flooding and mudslides.

These weather conditions complicated rescue operations at a hospital in Pingtung County where nine people died in a fire, according to authorities.

“Typhoon Krathon made landfall near the Xiaogang district of Kaohsiung around 12:40 p.m. today” (shortly before 7 a.m. Swiss time) in the southern part of the island, announced the Taiwan Central Meteorological Administration ( CWA).

It caused the death of at least two people and injured 219 people, firefighters said.

“I thought the end of the world had arrived. I have never seen such a violent typhoon in ten years. It was so huge and so scary,” Liu Chih-hsiang, the 60-year-old owner of a moving company in Kaohsiung, told AFP. “Our neighbors’ metal roof was torn off.”

Krathon previously devastated remote islands in the Philippines, killing one person, injuring eight and damaging more than 300 homes.

The Taiwanese were in lockdown two days before the arrival of the cyclonic episode, preceded by winds blowing at 126 km/h with gusts of up to 162 km/h and heavy rain. Schools and offices closed on Wednesday.

The population of Kaohsiung, a port city of 2.7 million inhabitants, had been particularly warned. “There will be destructive winds in this area. Take shelter as soon as possible,” meteorologists warned in messages sent to cell phones on Thursday.

In the afternoon, people were asked to stay at home while the eye of the storm crossed the area, with its procession of heavy rain and lightning.

Around 10,000 people were evacuated, according to a count Thursday by the Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior.

A 70-year-old man who fell on Tuesday while pruning trees in Hualien County (east) died in hospital on Wednesday. Another man, aged 66 and hospitalized Monday near Taitung, in the southeast, after a collision between his truck and a rock that fell on the road, died on Wednesday.

Krathon is seriously disrupting air traffic: on Thursday it led to the suspension of all domestic flights for the second consecutive day and the cancellation of around 240 international flights.

The typhoon also caused temporary power cuts in nearly 55,000 homes, according to the authorities. In Pingtung County, huge waves flooded coastal roads and caused them to collapse in two places.

In New Taipei, in northern Taiwan, a mudslide caused a huge rock to topple onto a temple, whose roof was partially destroyed, local television channel Set TV reported.