Typhoon Champi knocks out power to thousands in Taiwan

Emergency crews scrambled on Saturday to restore power to tens of thousands of homes in Taiwan after Typhoon Champi’s fierce winds battered the island, with the storm moving towards China and Japan.

Authorities evacuated more than 5,000 people from their homes ahead of the storm, which toppled trees, brought down power lines, and triggered brief flooding.

One person has been killed and more than 500 injured since Thursday, when the government began issuing warnings about the approaching typhoon.

Around 56,000 households are still without power as Champi continues to buffet the island, with nearly 24 centimetres (9.4 inches) of rain recorded in the western county of Miaoli on Saturday.

Most shops across northern and central Taiwan were closed for a second day, as the typhoon gradually moves away from the island’s northeast and heads north towards China and Japan.

“Although the period of the typhoon’s most severe impact has passed, we would like to remind everyone that winds and waves in the waters around Taiwan remain strong as the typhoon moves northwards,” the Central Weather Administration’s Wuu Woan-hwa said at a briefing.

Champi is the latest in a busy Pacific storm season turbocharged by the El Nino weather phenomenon that has caused unprecedented warming in the equatorial Pacific.

The storm was briefly a super typhoon as it crossed the ocean in recent days, with reported maximum sustained wind speeds of nearly 300 kilometres (186 miles) per hour.

It was packing wind speeds of 120 kph on Saturday, according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.