China issues highest alert for Typhoon Matmo and evacuates over 150,000 people

Beijing.- Chinese authorities reported this Sunday the evacuation of more than 150,000 people in the southeastern province of Guangdong due to the imminent arrival of Typhoon Matmo, which reached the category of strong typhoon and is expected to make landfall at local noon between that region and the neighboring island of Hainan, with winds of up to 45 meters per second. According to the state-owned chain CCTV 151,352 people had been evacuated, 9,916 from maritime zones and 141,436 on the mainland. The National Meteorological Center maintains the red alert, the most serious of its four-level system, estimating that Matmo, the twenty-first typhoon of the season in the Pacific, continues to intensify as it moves northwest at a speed of between 20 and 25 kilometers per hour. The phenomenon was located in the early hours of Sunday about 200 kilometers southeast of Xuwen County (Guangdong). Forecasts indicate that it will impact the coastal strip between Wuchuan (Guangdong) and Wenchang (Hainan) around noon before gradually weakening.

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The Guangdong provincial government activated the level 1 emergency response, the highest degree of the wind protocol, while the Ministry of Water Resources maintains the national level 3 for flood risk in the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and Yunnan. Authorities warned that the rivers in those regions, including those in the Pearl River basin, could experience significant rises and overflows in medium and small channels. In Hainan, reservoirs released more than 800 million cubic meters of water to anticipate the extreme rainfall expected. Among the preventive measures, Zhanjiang International Airport canceled all flights for the day, while in Hainan, railway services and ferries in the Qiongzhou Strait remain suspended.