Taiwan braces for Typhoon Bavi as storm nears island

Fishermen packed harbors, residents lined up for sandbags and farmers rushed to cut crops on Thursday as Typhoon Bavi closed in on Taiwan, where officials warned the storm could bring a punishing mix of wind, flooding and mountain rain.

Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration expected Bavi to hit the island hardest on Friday and Saturday, with widespread rainfall and heavy to extremely heavy rain possible in mountainous areas of central and southern Taiwan, as well as the east. Bavi was more likely to pass north of Taiwan than make landfall, but a sea typhoon warning was already in effect Thursday afternoon. Its average radius of winds above 15 meters per second was 380 kilometers.

Authorities placed about 29,000 soldiers on disaster-prevention standby, while President Lai Ching-te urged residents to prepare emergency supplies, including a grab bag meant to last three days. In the northeastern port town of Suao, hundreds of fishing boats crowded into harbor for shelter and residents gathered sandbags ahead of the storm’s arrival.

Bavi was forecast to skirt northern Taiwan before moving toward China’s eastern Fujian province on Saturday evening, and the system could dump as much as one meter of rain on mountains north of Taipei. Its impact was expected to peak after the storm’s center passed, a pattern that often leaves the most dangerous rainfall behind the strongest winds.

The storm arrived as southern China was still digging out from Typhoon Maysak. Flooding in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region had killed at least 39 people and left nine missing, with local officials saying 26 of the deaths were tied to a reservoir dam breach in the Hengzhou area under Nanning’s jurisdiction. About 130,000 people were evacuated.