East China on highest alert as Typhoon In-Fa lingers

Typhoon In-Fa -- the sixth of this year -- landed in the coastal waters near Pinghu, a county-level city under the administration of Jiaxing City, east China's Zhejiang Province, at around 9:50 a.m. on Monday, packing winds of up to 28 meters per second at its centre, according to the provincial flood control headquarters.

All high-speed trains passing through the cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo have halted service. As of 9:30 a.m. on Monday, nine major flood monitoring stations in Jiaxing exceeded the warning water level, of which eight exceeded the guaranteed water level, the Xinhua news agency reported.

At around 10 a.m., roads near the gymnasium in Pinghu City saw waterlogging with a depth of about 10 cm. No major disaster-related incidents have been reported in Jiaxing as of 11 a.m.

Wang Ping, deputy director of the emergency response centre of the port area in Jiaxing, said that they have prepared about 170,000 cubic meters of soil to combat the typhoon. About half of the 44 chemical enterprises in the port area suspended production, while the rest reduced production capacity.

Typhoon In-Fa has affected over 114,000 people in Jiaxing and damaged more than 267 hectares of crops and 1.33 hectares of aquafarms, causing direct economic losses of over 4.67 million yuan (about $721,000). Over 155,000 people have been evacuated to safety.