Residents of Tainan in southern Taiwan are hunkering down for the arrival of Typhoon Krathon. Wind and rain have intensified as the storm approaches the country's main island from the southwest. The city's government has urged residents to stay indoors.
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00:00Our reporter Rick Laud is live for us in the southern city of Tainan.
00:03That's where the storm is expected to make landfall.
00:05Rick, what's the situation where you're at?
00:11Well, we're really beginning to get a taste of what Typhoon Kraton is going to bring.
00:16Wind and rain noticeably increasing over the last two hours.
00:21As we've driven through town just now, we've seen trees down.
00:24We've seen the rivers full of water.
00:26And just before we came on air, a government warning was sent to everyone's phones,
00:30telling people to stay away from coastal areas because they're simply too dangerous.
00:34Concerns here that the low pressure at the centre of the storm
00:38could bring a storm surge and therefore widespread flooding.
00:42We spent some time in Anping district, a port district of Tainan,
00:46looking at a community facing up to this big storm.
00:5082-year-old shopkeeper, Hu Yuxia,
00:52is determined to stay here in the home she's lived in for more than 60 years,
00:57despite a storm warning and local officials' advice for her to move to safer ground.
01:03Hu lives alone, just metres from the waterfront in Taiwan's southern port city of Tainan.
01:19The full force of Typhoon Kraton is set to hit here in just a few hours,
01:26following a rare trajectory coming in from the west around Taiwan's southern tip
01:30to strike large urban centres like Tainan.
01:33Close to 70,000 people live in this ancient port district of Anping.
01:38Many of their houses are close to harbours and rivers and therefore liable to flooding.
01:43The local government has been keeping residents updated on the typhoon's progress
01:47and there's even an app for them to check rising water levels.
01:51Residents have been advised to stock three days of food and supplies
01:55and should they need to flee their homes,
01:5616 evacuation centres have been set up to accommodate them.
02:03More than a dozen pumps across this district
02:05are moving water out of drains in an attempt to keep streets clear.
02:17Taiwan is prone to both earthquakes and typhoons.
02:20Communities here regularly practice how to respond to disasters
02:24but its trajectory makes this typhoon different from others
02:28and could bring a rare storm surge to cities in the country's southwest.
02:33Most typhoons which are impacting Kaohsiung, Tainan,
02:37they've already gone across the central mountain range and are severely weakened
02:41and it's going to be coming right off the ocean and impacting these areas.
02:45So it's going to be, you know, in very good condition.
02:49The typhoon is still going to have its very strong circulation.
02:52So my hunch is that these areas are going to experience like typhoon conditions
02:58which are very atypical to what they usually experience
03:01as the typhoons come in from the east.
03:03It's just over two months since Taiwan's last typhoon,
03:06a storm that left 13 people dead and hundreds injured across the country.
03:11Many people here saying they learned lessons from that battering
03:14that they are now putting into practice.
03:17But typhoon Kraton has already proven both atypical and unpredictable,
03:22sure to test even well-prepared communities like this port of Anping.
03:28Typhoon Kraton is still about 100 kilometres off the coast here.
03:33It has weakened in intensity, it's no longer considered a super typhoon
03:36but it's also picked up speed.
03:38It's now moving at about nine kilometres an hour in this direction
03:42expected to make landfall not far from here tomorrow morning.
03:47The streets here in downtown Tainan now emptying,
03:51people heading home making last-minute preparations,
03:53hunkering down as they wait for a long night waiting for this big storm.