HONG KONG: Typhoon Mangkhut weakened to a tropical storm as it moved deeper into southern China on Monday, leaving death and destruction from Hong Kong to the Philippines. The storm was still affecting southern China's coast and the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan and rain and strong winds were expected to continue.
Hong Kong residents were told to stay away from the coastline and be on alert for occasional gales. Bus, ferry and rail services were suspended and almost 900 flights were canceled at the city's airport. Reports said Hong Kong's hospitals had to use backup power due to outages caused by the storm. Mangkhut earlier lashed the Philippines, sparking landslides and building collapses that killed at least 65 people, with another 43 missing. Authorities reported four deaths from falling trees and building materials in Guangdong, China's manufacturing hub. The Hong Kong Observatory reported Mangkhut was the most powerful cyclone to hit the city since 1979, packing maximum sustained gusts of 195 km per hour (121 mph).
2.4 million people evacuated
More than 2.4 million people had been evacuated in southern China's Guangdong province by Sunday evening to escape the typhoon, state media said. "Prepare for the worst," Hong Kong Security Minister John Lee Ka-chiu urged residents. That warning followed Mangkhut's devastating march through the northern Philippines on Saturday with sustained winds of 205 km per hour. Landslides caused by the pounding storm hit two villages in Itogon town in the mountain province of Benguet.
Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan said that at the height of the typhoon's onslaught, dozens of people, mostly miners and their families, rushed into an old three-story building in the village of Ucab. The building was obliterated when part of a mountain slope collapsed. Three villagers who managed to escape told authorities what happened. "They thought they were really safe there," the mayor said. He expressed sadness that the villagers, many of them poor, had few options to survive in a region where big corporations have profited immensely from gold mines.
The typhoon was occurring as tropical weather also was devastating the southern US Florence has dumped historical levels of rain on North Carolina.
