TAIPEI, Taiwan — A typhoon killed three people in Taiwan as it approached the island on Wednesday, while people trapped by rising floodwaters in the Philippines called for help in the Southeast Asian nation where at least 13 died.
Taiwan's Central News Agency said more than 220 other people were injured as Typhoon Gaemi gathered strength and brought strong winds and heavy rain.
Schools, offices and tourist sites closed across Taiwan, while air travelers rushed to board overseas flights. Airlines said many flights to Japan, China and other regional destinations would be canceled on Thursday. No trains will operate until 3 p.m., the Central News Agency reported.
Fishing boats were recalled to port amid turbulent seas. High winds knocked down some pedestrians and riders of the island's ubiquitous motor scooters. Shelters were opened in vulnerable areas, particularly in Taiwan's mountainous center and east that are prone to landslides and flooding. Streets were inundated in numerous towns and cities.
The three deaths included a driver pinned under his excavator after it overturned on a slippery road, a woman hit by a falling tree and a woman crushed in a car by a collapsing wall, the Central News Agency said.
The storm prompted the cancellation of air force drills off Taiwan's east coast.
Gaemi, called Carina in the Philippines, did not make landfall in that archipelago but enhanced its seasonal monsoon rains. They set off at least a dozen landslides and floods over five days, killing at least eight and displacing 600,000 people, the country's disaster risk mitigation agency said.
The bodies of a pregnant woman and three children were dug out Wednesday morning after a landslide buried a rural shanty in the mountainside town of Agoncillo in Batangas province. A rice porridge vendor was hit by a falling tree in another Batangas town Tuesday night.
