• Residents of Shenzhen clear supermarket shelves of supplies
• Hong Kong’s airline cancels hundreds of flights; Taiwan warns of ‘extremely torrential rain’

SHENZHEN: The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen was preparing on Monday to evacuate 400,000 people while residents of the northern Philippines sought shelter from gale-force winds as Super Typhoon Ragasa headed on a collision course with southern China.

The typhoon made landfall on Calayan Island, part of the sparsely populated Babuyan chain and as of 8:00pm on Monday, the storm was generating maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometres per hour (134 mph) near its centre with gusts of up to 265 kph, the Philippine weather service said.

“I woke up because of the strong wind,” said Tirso Tugagao, a resident of Aparri, a coastal town in northern Cagayan province. “It was hitting the windows, and it sounded like a machine that was switched on.”

On Calayan Island, at the storm’s centre, information officer Herbert Singun said chunks of a school roof had been ripped off, landing on an evacuation centre about 30 meters away and causing one minor injury.

“Can you see those coconut trees swaying in the distance?” he asked during a video chat. “There were eight of them before. Now only four are still standing. That goes to show how strong this typhoon is.”

Just over 10,000 people were evacuated across the country, with schools and government offices closed Monday in the Manila region and 29 other provinces.

Empty supermarket shelves

In Shenzhen, residents hurried to stock up on supplies ahead of the larger evacuation. In the city’s Bao’an district, long checkout queues formed at a supermarket whose shelves were largely empty of fresh meat and vegetables on Monday evening. A supermarket empl­oyee told AFP that bread had sold out by midday. “It’s not normally like this,” he said.

Nearby, Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific said it expected to cancel more than 500 flights as the typhoon threatened the financial hub.

An airline spokeswoman said passenger flights in and out of Hong Kong International Airport would be halted from 6 pm Tuesday, “resuming during daytime hours on Thursday”.

‘Extremely torrential’

In Taiwan, the state weather service predicted “extremely torrential rain” in the island’s east. Evacuations were underway in mountainous areas near Pingtung, local fire department officer James Wu told AFP. “What worries us more is that the damage could be similar to what happened during Typhoon Koinu two years ago,” Wu said, describing a storm that saw utility poles collapse and sheet-metal roofs sent flying.

A Philippine government weather specialist, John Gre­nder Almario, had warned on Sunday that “severe flooding and landslides” could be expected in northern areas of the main island of Luzon.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2025