Typhoon Yagi Approaches Vietnam After Pummeling Southern China

Typhoon Yagi barreled toward Vietnam on Saturday, packing powerful winds and torrential rain that killed at least one person before it made landfall. Earlier, the storm smashed into southern China, where about one million people were evacuated and at least two died.

Later Saturday, the typhoon is expected to become the most powerful storm on record to strike northern Vietnam. It is forecast to make landfall near the coastal city of Haiphong before passing Hanoi according to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. At least one person was killed in Hanoi, the capital, on Friday, according to state media.

The storm was equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 132 miles per hour as it moved west in the Gulf of Tonkin on Saturday morning, the center said. Since losing strength over southern China, the storm has rapidly intensified as it moves toward a “historical landfall,” it said.

Yagi was the strongest typhoon in a decade to hit Hainan, where two people died according to Chinese state media. The storm shook high rises, blew out windows, overturned trucks, felled trees and flooded homes, state media reported. The storm also washed more than two tons of rocks from the ocean onto the sea wall in Xuwen County in Guangdong Province, according to China Central Television, the state broadcaster.

The Chinese authorities called Yagi “extremely destructive.” More than 830,000 customers lost power and dozens of people were injured in Hainan after the storm made landfall there on Friday. About a million people were evacuated in Hainan and Guangdong provinces.