Taiwan hunkered down on Wednesday for the arrival of a strengthening Typhoon Gaemi, with financial markets and tourist sites shut, people getting the day off work and flights cancelled, while the military went on stand-by amid forecasts of torrential rain.
Gaemi, expected to be the strongest storm to hit Taiwan in eight years, is set to make landfall on the northeast coast on Wednesday evening, the island's weather authorities said.
They upgraded its status to a strong typhoon, packing gusts of up to 227 kph (141 mph) near its center.
After crossing the Taiwan Strait it is likely to hit the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian late on Thursday afternoon.
In rural Yilan county, where the typhoon will first hit land, wind and rain gathered strength, shutting eateries as most roads emptied out.
Work and school were suspended across Taiwan, with streets almost deserted in its capital, Taipei, during the normal rush hour, amid squally rain.
The government said more than 2,000 people had been evacuated from sparsely populated mountain areas at high risk of landslides from the "extremely torrential rain".
Almost all domestic flights had been cancelled, along with 201 international flights, the transport ministry said.
All rail operations will stop from midday (0400 GMT), with an abbreviated schedule for high-speed links between north and south Taiwan that will continue to operate, it added.
The typhoon is expected to bring rain of up to 1,800 mm (70 inches) to some mountainous counties in central and southern Taiwan, weather officials said.
Taiwan's defense ministry said it had put 29,000 soldiers on stand-by for disaster relief efforts.
Gaemi and a southwest monsoon brought heavy rain on Wednesday to the Philippine capital region and northern provinces.
The rains set off at least a dozen landslides and floods over five days, killing at least eight and displacing 600,000 people, including 35,000 who went to emergency shelters, the Philippines’ disaster risk mitigation agency said.
A landslide buried a rural shanty Tuesday in Agoncillo town in Batangas province, and the bodies of a pregnant woman and three children, aged 9 to 15, were dug out Wednesday morning, raising the toll in the country to 12 dead.
