Authorities have suspended classes and businesses and residents are preparing for the predicted landfall of the typhoon in Hainan.
Numerous facets of life in the area were brought to a standstill as a strong typhoon raced south of Hong Kong and headed toward a Chinese island province where it was predicted to make landfall.
After the city’s weather office issued a No. 8 typhoon alert for Typhoon Yagi, the third-highest warning level under the city’s weather system, trading on the stock market, financial services, and schools were suspended in Hong Kong on Friday.
With winds as high as 230 kilometers per hour (142 miles per hour) near its center, Yagi prompted over 250 people to seek safety in makeshift government shelters and caused over 100 flights out of the city to be canceled.
Hospitals had to treat five injured individuals.
Before the weather gradually subsided on Friday morning, scores of trees were downed throughout the financial district by heavy rain and strong winds overnight.
In the afternoon, the typhoon signal was reduced, and public transit and services gradually resumed.
The people of Hainan, a tropical vacation destination in southern China, prepared for the strong storm.
Flood safety measures and pauses
Later on Friday, the provincial meteorological service predicted that Yagi will landfall somewhere between Wenchang City and Xuwen County in the neighboring province of Guangdong.
On Thursday, people reinforced their windows with tape and erected sandbag barriers outside of buildings to protect against potential flooding, according to a report from China’s official Xinhua news agency.
According to the official China Daily, businesses, jobs, transportation, and classes were all suspended as early as Wednesday night in several regions of the province.
On Friday, all flights at Haikou City’s international airport were grounded and a few tourist sites were stopped.
When Yagi made landfall on Wednesday in the South China Sea off the northwest coast of the Philippines, it was still a tropical storm. It caused extensive floods and landslides that killed at least 16 people and left 17 more missing, especially in the northern and central provinces where it affected over 2 million people.
Classes, jobs, inter-island ferry services, and domestic flights were affected for days, affecting about 47,600 individuals who were uprooted from their homes in Philippine regions, including the heavily populated metropolitan Manila region.
