South Korea was on Sunday bracing for the arrival of its third major typhoon in two months, with school classes cancelled, ferry routes closed, and thousands of ships taken into shelters.
Typhoon Sanba – packing gusts of up to 48 metres per second – was moving northward at a speed of 26km/h off the Japanese island of Okinawa on Sunday morning, Seoul’s weather service said.
The typhoon caused blackouts to 38,600 households in Okinawa, where almost 250 people evacuated their homes, island officials said in a statement.
It is expected to pass South Korea’s southern resort island of Jeju on Monday morning before pounding the peninsula in the evening, arriving more than 80 kilometres southeast of the capital before churning northwards, Seoul’s weather service said.
Authorities have issued severe wind and heavy rain alerts for most of southern coastal regions, warning of rainfall of up to 300 millimetres per hour in some regions.
About 4,800 ships in the southwestern port city of Yeosu have been taken out of the typhoon’s path, while officials in the city and nearby areas have been put on high alert.