An uprooted tree blocks a road in Kaohsiung city, southern Taiwan, as the island is battered by powerful winds and torrential raid from Typhoon Krathon which came ashore at noon local time on Thursday. Photo by Ritchie B. Tongo/EPA-EFE
Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Typhoon Krathon barreled ashore in Taiwan on Thursday packing winds in excess of 100 mph and torrential rain, killing at least two people, injuring 123 and bringing the island to a standstill.
The slow-moving typhoon made landfall near the southwestern city of Kaohsiung, the country's second-largest city, leaving more than 50,000 people without power, damaging more than 1,000 bridges and roads and other infrastructure, uprooting trees, and triggering at least seven landslides, the Central Emergency Operation Center said in a news release.
Emergency services were searching for two missing people including one who fell into the sea in the town of Taixi, 55 miles southwest of Taichung and another who was swept from a bridge by a river torrent in a small town in the northwest, 40 miles north of the coastal city of Hualien.
Around 2.8 million residents of Kaohsiung and Pintung County, all the way down to Cape Eluanbi, were sent pre-dawn text messages urging them to take shelter from "destructive hurricane-force winds" by the Central Weather Administration which issued severe weather warnings for sea and land typhoon conditions, strong wind and "extremely heavy rain" for 21 out of 22 counties and islands.
Rainfall of 10-20 inches has already fallen across large areas of the island with as much as 40 inches in some places with a further 10-20 inches possible as the weather system passes through.
Almost 10,000 people were evacuated from their homes in 13 cities and counties as a precautionary step and 120 shelters have been opened, according to the CEOC.
Overstretched authorities also had to contend with a major blaze at a hospital in Pingtung County, along the coast from Kaohsiung, that killed eight people with two still unaccounted for, the semi-official Chinese News Agency reported.
Police and firefighters were searching the Antai Tian-Sheng Memorial Hospital in Donggang Township for a patient and an employee, CNA quoted county magistrate Chou Chun-mi as saying.
The hospital said 323 patients in one of the main buildings where the fire struck were safely evacuated and transferred to other area hospitals.
Schools, businesses and the financial market, which closed Wednesday, remained shut.
The storm also brought travel chaos with all internal flights grounded for a second straight day, 236 international flights canceled and services on the country's 186 mph high-speed railway linking the capital, Taipei, with Kaohsiung suspended.
The slow-moving Krathon, which arrived in Taiwan from the northern Philippines where Julien, as it was known there, caused severe flooding and forced the evacuations of thousands of people, is moving northward across the island but is forecast to weaken into a tropical depression before it reaches Taipei late Friday.
