Super Typhoon Yagi roars into China’s Hainan, disrupting lives of millions

HONG KONG/BEIJING: Asia’s strongest storm this year, Super Typhoon Yagi, landed in China’s Hainan on Friday, bringing violent gales and heavy rain that triggered widespread power outages, paralysing the tourist island province known as “China’s Hawaii”.

Packing maximum sustained winds of 234 km per hour near its centre, Yagi registers as the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far, after the Category 5 Atlantic hurricane Beryl, and the most severe in the Pacific basin this year.

After more than doubling in strength since killing 16 people in the northern Philippines earlier this week, Yagi slammed into the city of Wenchang in Hainan on Friday afternoon.

A little more than an hour after Yagi’s arrival, Hainan saw power outages that affected 830,000 households in the province, the official news agency Xinhua said.

The provincial power supply department had put together a 7,000-member emergency team that would embark on repairs as soon as conditions permitted, Xinhua added.

By Friday night, power to 260,000 households had been restored.

Ahead of Yagi’s arrival, the island known for its sandy beaches and glitzy hotels had cancelled flights and ferries, shuttered businesses, and told its population of more than 10 million to refrain from going out.

The typhoon had already shut schools, businesses and transport links in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong province as well as airports in Vietnam, which it is predicted to hit, along with Laos, over the weekend.