By AMY CHANG CHEIN
Typhoon Gaemi churned closer to Taiwan on Wednesday night, lashing the northeastern coast with fierce winds and heavy rain in what was forecast to be the most powerful storm to hit the island in eight years.
Taiwan was on high alert as the storm approached. Schools and businesses were shut, more than 500 flights were canceled and military drills were scrapped, authorities said. Fewer cars were on the road than usual in the capital, Taipei, where some streets were impassable from floods. Long lines formed at some supermarkets as people stocked up on food and water.
The storm’s destructive impact was being felt even before it made landfall.
Two people died and 201 people were injured, the Taiwan government said on Wednesday. A woman was hit by a piece of a wall that fell from a building in the eastern county of Hualien. In southern Taiwan, a woman was crushed to death by a tree brought down by high winds, authorities said.
In Yilan county, strong winds ripped out utility poles. In Hualien, which was expected to receive heavy rain, thousands of residents in mountainous areas headed for safety.
Gaemi had maximum sustained winds of 127 mph as it neared Taiwan on Wednesday evening, according to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. That would make it a Category 3 hurricane on the five-tier wind scale that is used to measure tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. The storm was expected to begin to weaken once it made landfall, but the center of the storm had not yet reached land, according to publicly available satellite and radar images.
Taiwanese authorities upgraded Gaemi to a “severe typhoon” on Wednesday, the highest level on their three-tier scale. It was expected to be the first typhoon of that intensity to make landfall on the island since 2016, said Huang Chun-hsi, a meteorologist at Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration. On Wednesday night, it was forecast to make landfall on Taiwan’s northeastern coast in a slightly weakened state, the Central Weather Administration said. After moving away from the island on Friday, it was expected to continue heading northwest toward mainland China.
The storm had a “looping track,” meteorologists said, meaning that it could remain for longer at the same location, bringing more torrential rain and inflicting more damage. Taiwan was last hit by a typhoon of this strength and type in 2008.
“Rainfall that lasts for half a day to a day can cause very serious damage,” Huang said.
As Gaemi approached, heavy rain and strong winds lashed Taiwan, home to about 23 million people. Some weather stations in the north of the island reported more than 1 foot of rainfall on Wednesday.
Taipower, a state utility, said that bad weather caused by the storm had knocked out power to more than 345,000 customers. Taiwan’s stock exchange was closed on Wednesday and will be closed on Thursday.
Military drills were canceled on Tuesday because of bad weather caused by the typhoon. Defense officials said that personnel involved in those drills would be deployed for emergency preparations and disaster relief.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest maker of advanced computer chips, said in a statement that it expected its factories to maintain normal operations during the typhoon and that it had activated routine storm preparations. The company is a critical node in the global electronics supply chain.
In China, the Central Meteorological Observatory issued the highest-level weather alert for Gaemi, which forecasters predicted would make landfall on Friday in Fujian province. The province said that it would pause all passenger trains, hundreds of ferry routes and all recreational aquatic activities on Thursday.
The storm has already left destruction in its wake. Gaemi has already thrashed the Philippines, where the storm was called Carina, killing at least four people and dumping heavy rain. A landslide caused by the storm on Wednesday killed four people in Agoncillo, a town south of the capital, Manila, local authorities said.
In Manila, entire homes were submerged in some areas and government offices were closed on Wednesday. Authorities in the capital region declared a “state of calamity.”
The typhoon also canceled flights to and from eight airports in Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture on Wednesday and Thursday.
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