One person has been killed and 73 injured in Taiwan where Super Typhoon Kong-rey, one of the most powerful storms to threaten the island in decades, made landfall.
Packing maximum wind speeds of 184km/h (114mph), Kong-rey slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday afternoon, the Central Weather Administration said.
The death was reported in the central county of Nantou when a falling tree crushed a vehicle, the National Fire Agency said.
The streets of the capital, Taipei, were largely deserted as heavy rains and fierce winds lashed the city.
Island-wide, nearly 35,000 soldiers were on standby to help with relief efforts.
Work and schools across Taiwan were suspended on Thursday as people hunkered down before the storm.
More than 400 domestic and international flights were cancelled while all ferry services were suspended. Nearly 100,000 homes have lost power, disaster officials said.
The wind and rain intensified after the eye of the typhoon passed, an official at the fire department told the AFP news agency.
There was “very serious” flooding in Hualien County, Hualian fire department chief Wang Ming-chung said, with rescue and evacuation still under way.
“We are also handling incidents of falling signboards hitting people and fallen trees on the roads,” Wang told AFP.
Kong-rey was expected to weaken after hitting land and move across the mountains that run down the centre of the island before exiting over the Taiwan Strait in the evening, Chu Mei-lin from the Central Weather Administration said.
But she warned that the storm would “severely” affect the island all day and into the early hours of Friday.
Rik Glauert, a senior reporter with the TaiwanPlus News television channel, told Al Jazeera from the southeastern city of Taitung that it was “very rare for a typhoon to come this close to November”.
“The last one in November was about 50 years ago. And the main impact that it is going to have on this area is agriculture. A lot of the area around this place in the southeast is where Taiwan grows its fruits and rice,” he said.
“That produce is just about ready to be harvested over the next few weeks and months. Now the wind and rain like this, it is going to ruin a lot of farmers’ harvest,” he added.
