MANILA: As Super Typhoon Ragasa continued on its collision path with southern China on Monday, inhabitants of the northern Philippines sought cover from gale-force winds, while the Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen started preparations to evacuate 400,000 people.
The Philippine weather office reports that at 3 pm (0700 GMT), the typhoon made landfall on Calayan Island, which is part of the sparsely populated Babuyan chain in the Philippines.
The national weather office said that the storm’s center had maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometers per hour as of 2 pm (0600 GMT), with gusts as high as 295 kph.
“I was awakened by the intense wind. It sounded like a machine that had been turned on as it struck the glass,” Tirso Tugagao remarked.
