Typhoon Sepat slams Taiwan, heads for China

TAIPEI, Aug 18 (Reuters) Typhoon Sepat lashed Taiwan with strong winds and torrential rain today, injuring 24 people, forcing more than a thousand to flee and cutting power to tens of thousands more before heading towards China.

In China's coastal areas, around half a million people had to be evacuated and flights were cancelled due to the typhoon, which had already caused flooding in the Philippines.

In Taiwan, two vehicles were crushed by a falling billboard in Taipei, scaffolding collapsed at a building in the outskirts of the city and workers battled to clear uprooted trees that were blocking roads and repair snapped power cables.

''We were so busy yesterday because customers were grabbing instant noodles and other things from our shelves to stock up food for the typhoon today,'' Alice Wu, a shopkeeper at a convenience store in Taipei aged in her 20s, told Reuters.

''Things are quieter today because everybody is staying indoors.

Almost all the shops around here are closed, except for us.'' About 33,800 homes in Taiwan were still suffering from power outages, after repairs were done in most of the nearly 590,000 homes that had no electricity, according to the disaster centre.

Agriculture losses totalled 832 million Taiwan dollar (25 million US dollars), triggering market worries of increasing inflationary pressures as fruit and vegetable prices are seen rising sharply.

''When sun comes out, all the fruit will be rotten. All these are spoiled,'' said a papaya farmer in Taitung, one of the hardest hit counties in Taiwan.

Taiwan Premier Chang Chun-hsiung urged Taiwanese to be vigilant of the impact from the typhoon, even though the storm was slowly departing, according to a government statement.

BOUND FOR CHINA The eye of the storm had already passed over Taiwan's main island and is due to make landfall in China's eastern province of Fujian either today or tomorrow, China's Xinhua news agency said.

Xinhua said that nearly 300,000 people in Fujian, about 210,000 in Zhejiang province and around 70,000 in Guangdong province were evacuated.

In Fujian, officials were told to cancel their holidays to make emergency preparations for the storm, with flights from its cities cancelled since morning, media reports said.

At 1830 IST, the centre of the typhoon was around 90 km (56 miles) north of the offshore Penghu islands located in Taiwan's west, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said.

It packed sustained winds of 126 km (78 miles) per hour and gusts up to 162 km (101 miles) per hour but was gradually losing strength, having been downgraded to a category 3 ''medium typhoon'' from a category 5 ''super typhoon'', a bureau official said.

Twenty-four people were injured in cities and counties of Taipei in the north and Kaohsiung in the south, while another 2,240 people had to evacuate their homes in Taiwan, according to the National Fire Agency, Taiwan's disaster centre.

Officials at the centre said one person had died and another was injured yesterday while driving in bad weather, but the case was considered a road accident and not a storm-related casualty.

Some flights from Taipei and Kaohsiung, Taiwan's two biggest cities, were either postponed or cancelled. Flights affected were mainly bound for Hong Kong, Macau and other Asian cities.

In the Philippines, where Sepat exacerbated monsoon rains, nearly 390,000 people had been affected by flooding in Manila and northern provinces and more than 2,500 people were being housed in evacuation centres, disaster officials said.

''We are praying hard for the rains to stop so our lives can go back to normal,'' said Ricardo Quito, 54, who had been camping with his family in a public market.

''What we need now are medicines, foods and clothing. Our children are getting sick because of the unsanitary environment here.'' REUTERS SYU RAI2105