Shanghai – With the largest storm to hit since 1949 moving in, tens of millions of people in Shanghai and throughout China’s heavily populated east coast holed up indoors on Monday, causing transportation disruptions and downed trees throughout the area. According to official media, typhoon Bebinca made landfall early on Monday morning in the eastern coastal region of the city, with winds as high as 151 kilometres per hour (94 miles per hour). Soon after Bebinca made landfall, state media CCTV declared that it was the greatest storm to batter Shanghai since Typhoon Gloria in 1949.
For the Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday, many businesses had already closed, and the 25 million citizens of the city had been told not to leave their homes. CCTV was informed by Shanghai’s flood control headquarters that they had already received scores of reports regarding typhoon-related incidents, the most of which were fallen trees and billboards. An AFP correspondent observed that a thoroughfare in the city center was totally blocked by an uprooted tree. Winds that are hostile A doctor named Xiong Zhuowu, who lives in the northern Baoshan area, shared a video of a real estate agent’s sign being torn down on his compound’s roof.
Xiong told AFP, “I feel really nervous today; I am continually checking what the scenario is out the window.” “As soon as the property management discovered some trees downstairs with loose roots, they called me to move my car to protect it in case the tree fell.” A line of trees on the riverbank was being torn apart by fierce gusts, as captured on a government livefeed from Baoshan. Even with the intense downpours and unexpected wind gusts, some people continued to brave the weather to run errands. Wu Yun, a resident, explained that she had gone outside to take care of business at her sales job. She strained to open her umbrella against the wind and told AFP, “I think it is acceptable, because I also seen a lot of typhoons in the south, so I think Shanghai is okay (compared to them)”.
In the old French Concession of the city, the road was littered with fallen bikes and branches while delivery drivers and cleanup teams trudged on despite the pouring rain. Aircraft grounded Ferry services and certain train services have been suspended, and all aircraft at Shanghai’s two main airports are grounded. At one in the morning local time, highways were closed, and inside-city roads are restricted to a speed of forty kilometers per hour (25 miles per hour). At rush hour, live video feeds showed Shanghai’s normally jammed roads almost empty of traffic, and its famed skyline obscured by thick fog.
Nine thousand residents have been evacuated from Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, authorities said. CCTV broadcast footage of a reporter by the coast in neighbouring Zhejiang province, where waves pounded the craggy coastline under leaden skies. “If I step out into (the storm), I can barely speak,” the reporter said. “You can see that the surface of the sea is just wave after wave, each higher than the last.”