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Taipei: A powerful typhoon lashed Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rains on Monday, disrupting air traffic and triggering landslides and floods that killed at least one man in the southeastern part of the island.
Typhoon Fung Wong hit Taiwan just before dawn, packing winds of 167 kilometres per hour. It left the island, heading for the Chinese mainland, about nine hours later.
Television images showed rescue personnel wading through waist-deep waters to extricate people from their homes in Hualien in eastern Taiwan, where the typhoon made landfall.
A man drowned when he slipped into a flooded rice paddy in Taitung County in southeast Taiwan, the disaster relief centre said.
Authorities evacuated more than 1,000 isolated villagers and barred traffic at low lying, vulnerable bridges, the centre said.
Television reports said rampaging flood waters had reached a mountain village, prompting some 1,000 people to prepare to evacuate.
The city's domestic airport was shut down, but at the international airport in suburban Taoyuan county some long-haul and regional flights using larger aircraft were still taking off and landing normally, according to the Taoyuan airport's website.
The state-run Taiwan Power company said more than 43,000 homes had lost power around the island and several roads were blocked by landslides.
The storm is expected to make landfall on the southeastern Chinese coast early on Tuesday, the Central Weather Bureau said.
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