A powerful typhoon lashed Taiwan yesterday, sparking worries of flash floods and landslides and forcing offices and schools to close. Typhoon Talim, with gusts near the centre up to 227 kph, is expected to make landfall just to the east of the capital Taipei early today and was already bringing strong winds and rains to the island’s northeast yesterday.

“The wind will likely get worse as the structure of the storm looks fairly intact right now,” said Tsai Fu-chien, an official at the weather bureau. “The wind will grow stronger tonight and in the early hours of tomorrow morning,” he said of the category 4 storm out of a five-step ranking, with five being the strongest.

The eye of the storm was about 180 km southeast of Hualien on the northeast coast by 1000 GMT, the Central Weather Bureau said, and Tsai said he expected the eye to pass close to Taipei, a city of 2.6 million.

Winds along the northeast were already about 120 kph as Talim, moving west-northwest at 21 kph, closed in. “It looks like this will be a strong typhoon,” said a fisherman as he tied up his boat at a harbour on the north coast, pounded by large waves. “We need to secure all the boats or our boss will get mad.”

The storm also injured two people and left thousands without power on southern Japanese isles near Taiwan. The government has not yet said whether businesses in Taipei, home to Taiwan’s stock exchange and foreign exchange market, would reopen today.

Schools and offices in Taipei, plus eastern and central Taiwan cities and counties, closed earlier yesterday. The typhoon is the third to hit Taiwan this year. The government told people to stay away from coastal areas, which were being pummelled by huge waves, and avoid mountainous regions and rivers that are prone to flash floods and mudslides. No casualties have been reported so far.

Some residents started to store water in buckets and tanks, having suffered from acute shortages following other storms this year. Farmers complained of produce destroyed by the heavy rain.

Taiwan’s Chinese Petroleum Corp. and Formosa Petrochemical Corp. said their refineries were operating normally.

Harbour officials at ports in Keelung and Suao said they would monitor the storm’s progress and could suspend work if it became too dangerous. The storm is expected to hit southeast China near Fuzhou in Fujian province within hours of crossing Taiwan.

Typhoons frequently menace Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and southern China during the storm season that lasts from early summer to late autumn. Typhoon Haitang killed 12 people in July, with three still listed as missing.

In 2001, one of Taiwan’s deadliest years for storms, Typhoon Toraji, killed 200 people. A few months later, Typhoon Nari caused Taipei’s worst flooding on record and killed 100.

<B>Tiffany WU</B>