Typhoon Bavi Forces 14,000 to Shelter in Taiwan as Storm Threatens China

Typhoon Bavi was moving across the western Pacific on Saturday with a clear trajectory: it had already battered Japan's southwestern islands, was currently lashing Taiwan's northern coast, and would make landfall in eastern China by early Sunday morning. In its path lay millions of people bracing for impact, and in its wake, a trail of damage that had already claimed lives.

In Taiwan, more than 14,000 residents had abandoned their homes. The port city of Keelung, positioned directly in the storm's line of approach, had become nearly empty—streets quiet, most businesses shuttered. The typhoon was driving sustained winds of 144 kilometers per hour with gusts reaching 180, and the Central Weather Administration warned of waves climbing to 10 meters high along the coast. Over 27,000 households had lost power. A breakfast shop owner named Tsai, 50 years old, was one of the few people moving through the deserted streets. She had ventured out only because people on emergency duty needed to eat. "If the wind and rain start picking up," she told a reporter, "I'll be heading home early." The forecaster Jason Cheng said the worst would come during daylight hours—the period from noon through the afternoon would bring the storm's greatest force.

What had begun as a super typhoon when it struck Guam and the Northern Marianas on Monday had weakened somewhat by the time it reached Taiwan, though not enough to ease the danger. The storm's strong-wind radius had contracted to 350 kilometers, meaning it would not be the largest typhoon to hit Taiwan in more than three decades, as had been feared. Still, some Taiwanese expressed irritation at the government's warnings, which had prompted widespread business closures on Friday and sent people scrambling to stockpile groceries. One shop owner in Keelung, surnamed Li, complained that the alerts had sounded catastrophic and caused unnecessary panic. "There hasn't even been much wind or rain these past two days," he said, frustrated at the loss of business.

Japan's Okinawa region had already absorbed the storm's force. More than 18,000 households and facilities lost power, with the Miyako region taking the worst of it. Japanese airlines cancelled dozens of flights, stranding more than 26,000 passengers. A professional storm-chaser named James Reynolds, posting from Ishigaki on Saturday, described gale-force conditions with overnight gusts reaching typhoon strength.

The Philippines had already paid in blood. Heavy rains driven by Bavi triggered two landslides on the southern island of Mindanao on Friday, killing at least 15 people. Across the archipelago, 313 vessels were sheltering in closed ports, waiting for the adverse weather to pass.

China was next. Bavi was expected to make landfall in the early hours of Sunday in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian, where state television forecast exceptionally heavy rains. In Xiaguan Town in Zhejiang Province, authorities had evacuated the entire population of more than 10,000 people due to exposure to strong winds. This came as China was already reeling from extreme weather that had struck the southern and central regions earlier in the week—storms that had killed at least 39 people, caused dozens of rivers to overflow, and ruptured a reservoir dam. Bavi would arrive into a landscape already saturated and fragile.