Typhoon Doksuri shuts businesses, grounds flights in Taiwan

As of 8:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) Typhoon Doksuri, categorized at the second-strongest typhoon level by Taiwan’s weather bureau, headed towards the southern Taiwan Strait with maximum winds of 191 km (118 miles) per hour.

At one point Doksuri was a super typhoon, but lost some of its strength after it lashed the coastline of the northern Philippines on Wednesday, bursting banks of rivers and leaving thousands without electricity.

Doksuri killed five people in the Philippines, according to the country’s disaster agency.

Taiwan’s weather bureau issued wind and rain warnings on Thursday for the southern part of the island, including the major port city of Kaohsiung where businesses and schools were closed and landslide warnings issued.

All domestic flights were suspended in Taiwan while a handful of international flights were canceled. Railway services between southern and eastern Taiwan were shut.

More than 4,000 people were evacuated as a precaution, mostly in the mountainous southern and eastern Taiwan, where nearly 0.7 meters of rainfall was recorded in some areas and up to 1 metre of rain was forecast.

The storm had cut power from more than 15,700 households across Taiwan but the majority of them had since been restored.

“Typhoon Doksuri should not be underestimated,” Kaohsiung city mayor Chen Chi-mai said in a Facebook post late on Wednesday.

“The police and military force will assist in the effort of forced evacuation if needed,” he said, pointing threats by torrential rain in mountainous areas.