Thousands evacuated and flights grounded as Typhoon Champi hits eastern China

Typhoon Champi continued to batter China’s eastern coast on Saturday, grounding over a hundred flights and prompting the authorities to relocate tens of thousands of people, while weakening as it moved towards Japan.

Flights from airports in Shanghai as well as Fujian and Zhejiang provinces were grounded.

China Eastern Airlines said it had cancelled 39 domestic flights to and from Shanghai’s two main airports while flights to and from the cities of Fuzhou and Wenzhou were also affected.

The cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou in Zhejiang also announced the cancellation of 37 and 44 flights respectively on Saturday.

The railway authorities suspended some high-speed rail services passing through Zhejiang on Saturday and imposed temporary speed restrictions on other routes in the province on Friday and Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai authorities evacuated some 62,400 people ahead of the storm’s arrival on Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

China’s National Meteorological Centre kept a blue typhoon warning – the lowest level in the country’s four-tier system – in place on Saturday morning for the fifth straight day.

The storm was expected to turn to the northeast while moving along the waters off Zhejiang and head towards southwestern Japan, although it may remain close to mainland China’s east coast on Sunday.

“Typhoon Champi will continue to affect China’s eastern waters and coastal areas of east China,” the meteorological centre added.

It also urged offshore workers and ships to return to port and warned people in coastal areas to stay away from beaches, mountains and river valleys.

China’s State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management also activated a level-four emergency response, the lowest of four levels, for flood and typhoon control in the province of Jiangsu on Friday.

“Under the combined influence of cold air and the typhoon, strong winds will persist over the southeastern waters and along the coast of eastern China from October 23 to 26, with heavy to torrential rain in parts of Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang,” the authorities said.

Champi brushed past the northeastern coast of Taiwan in the early hours of Saturday without making landfall.

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Super Typhoon Champi: flights cancelled as Taiwan and Japan brace for storm

The island’s disaster response agency said on Saturday that the storm had killed one person and injured 527. It also recorded 6,550 incidents such as fallen trees and damage to buildings and signs.

Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei said flights would gradually resume on Saturday as Champi moved away from the island. The airport cancelled 563 flights on Friday.

The National Meteorological Centre said that maximum wind speeds near the storm’s centre had dropped to 35 metres per second, or 126 km/h, on Saturday compared with 45 metres per second (162km/h) on Friday,