Two vessels sink and three others run aground as Taiwan and Philippines endure downpours and strong gusts that have killed at least three and injured 200
A tanker and a cargo ship have sunk and three other vessels run aground as Typhoon Gaemi made its way across Taiwan, unleashing torrential rainfall and whipping the island with winds that caused significant flooding and left three people dead.
Philippines authorities were scrambling to contain an oil spill after a tanker carrying 1.4m litres of oil capsized in Manila Bay. The MT Terra Nova had been heading for the city of Iloilo when it sank about 7km off the coast off Limay municipality in Bataan province in the early hours of Thursday.
One of the 17 crew was missing and a coast guard spokesman said they were “racing against time” to contain an oil spill stretching several kilometres. If all the oil were to leak it would be the biggest spill in Philippines history and threaten the shoreline of the capital, Manila, said the spokesman, Rear Admiral Armando Balilo.
Authorities had not directly linked the capsize to the typhoon, which passed through the area on Wednesday and brought torrential rain and high seas, but were investigating “if there was an existing weather disturbance in the vicinity waters”.
Meanwhile, search and rescue operations were being hampered by continuing poor weather on Taiwan’s south-east coast, after nine Myanmar crew fell overboard from a Tanzania-flagged cargo ship named Fu Shun that was hit by rough seas, Taiwan officials told the Guardian. A distress call was sent at around 6.30am on Thursday saying the boat was sinking.
Three other vessels had also run aground during the storm. An Indonesia-flagged ship named Iriana ran aground in Pingtung shortly after it lifted anchor following repairs to its rudder. Authorities said all 20 crew were safe and there was no risk of oil leak. A Portugal-flagged ship, Sopfia, ran aground off the coast of Tainan, and the Mongolia-flagged Basia ran aground, also in Pingtung. Crews were safe or waiting to be rescued, Taiwan authorities said.
Gaemi hit Taiwan’s eastern Yilan county as a super typhoon after circling off the coast at around midnight local time on Thursday, said Taiwan’s weather bureau.
It had caused downpours and strong gusts across Taiwan before its arrival, killing one scooter rider in southern Kaohsiung city who was crushed by a falling tree, a woman in eastern Hualien who died after a wall fell on the car she was in, and a neighbourhood leader in New Taipei who was driving an excavator that overturned, authorities said.
More than 270 people were injured by Wednesday evening while more than 290,000 homes were plunged into darkness due to power outages, disaster officials said. Almost 170 incidents of flooding had also been reported, with waters yet to recede in most cases. “Wind and rain continue to intensify, posing a threat to various parts of Taiwan, [and its outlying islands of] Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu … [the public should] be on high alert.”
The first typhoon to make landfall in Taiwan this year, Gaemi was expected to be the strongest in eight years, a government forecaster said.
By 8pm on Wednesday, authorities had evacuated more than 8,500 people living in precarious conditions across Taiwan, particularly in Hualien – a mountainous area with a high risk of landslides.
Trains and ferry services were suspended and hundreds of international and domestic flights were cancelled. Work and schools were closed across most of the island on Wednesday, prompting large crowds at supermarkets. In what is something of a social tradition when the government declares typhoon days, people booked out karaoke rooms.
The weather also forced the self-ruled island to cancel some of its annual Han Kuang war games – which test preparedness for a Chinese invasion – though an anti-landing drill went ahead as scheduled on Wednesday morning on Penghu, west of Taiwan’s main island.
“We expect that the impact of the typhoon will be extended to four days [until Friday],” said Taiwan’s weather bureau chief, Cheng Jia-ping.
Schools and offices were to remain closed for the second day in a row in several cities – including Taipei – with authorities expecting adverse weather to continue across the island.
Government offices were closed and streets emptied in the capital, Taipei, while some stores had their entrances sandbagged to keep out flood water.
Taiwanese company TSMC, the world’s largest silicon chipmaker, said it would maintain normal production and that it had “activated routine typhoon alert preparation procedures” at all fabrication plants.
Earlier, landslides killed six in provinces surrounding Manila, police and disaster officials in the Philippines said.
Gaemi was expected to make its way across the strait and hit China’s eastern Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, where authorities issued a red storm alert and the highest level emergency response setting. All passenger trains were suspended for Thursday and part of Friday in Fujian, state media reported. Offshore construction projects were evacuated and ships returned to shore.
In Japan, weather authorities in the southern island region of Okinawa urged residents to “exercise strong vigilance” against storms, high waves and floods.
Taiwan is accustomed to frequent tropical storms from July to October but experts say climate change has increased their intensity, leading to heavy rains, flash floods and strong gusts, and increasing the chance of landslides.
Human-caused climate breakdown has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive tropical cyclones (though the overall number per year has not changed globally). This is because warming oceans provide more energy, producing stronger storms.
Extreme rainfall from tropical cyclones has increased substantially, as warmer air holds more water vapour. For example, the amount of rainfall produced by Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017 would have been all but impossible without the record warm ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coastal storm surges are also higher and more damaging due to the sea level rise driven by climate breakdown. For example, the devastating storm surge from Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, was about 20% higher due to human-caused climate breakdown.
With Agence France-Presse
Source: theguardian.com