Populous Chinese coastal areas have been hit by severe tropical storm Typhoon Haikui, with Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, and the city of Shanghai, inundated with rain and whipped by strong winds.
The storm front was expected to sweep over the major metropolitan area of Shanghai late Tuesday evening. Zhejiang and Shanghai’s local flood protection offices have dispatched soldiers in case of serious flooding, according to a state-run media.
All flights departing Shanghai’s Pudong and Hongqiao airports have been canceled for the evening of Aug. 7, as have flights at Xiaoshan International Airport, located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang’s largest city.
Many netizens posted frustrated messages on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like blogging service. “Right now all flights are canceled,” said Weibo user Edison Huang, who is stuck at Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan airport. “I think the ones going out tomorrow morning will be canceled too. We have not been informed whether we will be placed on other flights or issued refunds. Why did I have to encounter a typhoon? What a tragedy.”
Zhejiang’s provincial observatory said on its website that the typhoon’s center was located 167 miles southeast of Zhejiang’s Xiangshan County at 2 p.m. on Aug. 7. The observatory issued a red warning for Typhoon Haikui on Tuesday morning, which symbolizes the highest degree of severity in China’s storm classification system.
The official website of Shanghai’s weather observatory is currently unavailable.
By Tuesday morning, some 200,000 residents in Shanghai had been relocated. In the nearby province of Zhejiang, more than 1 million people have moved out to safer locations, more than 40 percent of them residents in poorly constructed buildings, according to the state-run Suzhou News Web.
Haikui is the Chinese word for sea anemone. The country is still recovering from typhoons Damrey and Saola, which struck last weekend.
Read the original Chinese article.
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