Champi leaves one dead and 616 injured in Taiwan, emergency center says, as the storm turns toward Japan

Storm Champi has moved away from Taiwan after two days of wind and rain that left one person dead and 616 injured, according to Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operation Center. As of 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, Taiwan time (2 a.m. PDT), the center counted those casualties since the storm began to affect the island on Thursday as a typhoon, Focus Taiwan, the English service of Taiwan’s Central News Agency, reports (Focus Taiwan). Most of the injuries involved minor scrapes and bruises, and the center reported no one missing (Focus Taiwan; Taipei Times).

The death came early in the storm. On Thursday, waves driven by the approaching typhoon swept a man away from a beach in Liuqiu Township, a small island off Pingtung County in the south, the CEOC said (Focus Taiwan). Reuters, citing Taiwan’s fire department, also counts one death, a man swept away by waves from the island of Liuqiu (Reuters via CNA).

The injury count grew through Saturday. Reuters, in a report updated at 12:42 p.m. Singapore time, quoted the fire department’s figure of 527 injuries; the CEOC tally that Focus Taiwan and the Taipei Times cite, as of 5 p.m., reached 616 (Reuters via CNA; Focus Taiwan). This desk treats 616 as the later official figure and reads the gap as a timing difference, not a dispute.

Damage reports piled up across the north. The CEOC said it had received 9,027 reports, including 3,287 involving fallen trees, with 1,282 of those in Taipei, the most of any city or county, followed by 646 in Taichung. Another 3,033 reports involved essential infrastructure and 1,014 involved billboards and signs (Focus Taiwan). In Taipei, Reuters described downed trees and on-off squally showers, and noted that a swathe of northern and central Taiwan, including the capital, declared a second day of office and school closures on Saturday (Reuters via CNA).

Reuters gives the most vivid account of the storm’s path. The CWA said the storm glanced off Yilan County’s northeastern coast early Saturday, and Reuters reports that its centre then turned south around midnight, hugged the Yilan coastline and made “a rare loop offshore” before moving north, triggering gusts of about 227 km/h in some coastal areas, knocking down power lines and sending roof tiles flying (Reuters via CNA). “It was most terrifying around midnight,” a retired teacher surnamed Lin told Reuters as he inspected downed banana trees in his garden in Yilan. “It was a sleepless night. I haven’t seen anything like this in many years” (Reuters via CNA).

Rain totals ran highest in the northeast and northwest. Yilan County recorded 650.0 mm of accumulated rain from Thursday through 4 p.m. Saturday, the highest in the country, while Taoyuan and Hsinchu County each received more than 500 mm and Taipei 469.5 mm, according to the CEOC. On Saturday alone, Miaoli recorded 302.0 mm by 4 p.m. (Focus Taiwan). As a precaution against landslides, authorities had evacuated 4,960 people by 4 p.m., from New Taipei, Taoyuan, Keelung and Tainan cities and eight counties including Yilan, Hualien and Pingtung (Focus Taiwan).

Power cuts reached hundreds of thousands of homes. The CEOC said more than 340,000 households lost power during the storm and about 22,000 remained without electricity on Saturday evening, with service expected back by 11 p.m. (Focus Taiwan). Reuters cites Taipower as saying more than 288,000 homes lost electricity at one point, though most had reconnected (Reuters via CNA). The two figures come from different agencies and may count differently; neither source explains the gap.

Travel took a heavy hit. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s operator counted 563 canceled flights on Friday and another 261 by 10:15 a.m. Saturday, and Taipei’s Songshan airport also saw cancellations and diversions, the Taipei Times reports (Taipei Times). Reuters cites the transport ministry as counting 242 cancelled flights on Saturday, down from almost 1,000 on Friday (Reuters via CNA). Farms also suffered: the Ministry of Agriculture estimated NT$133.36 million (US$4.1 million) in agricultural losses as of Saturday afternoon, more than 80 percent of them in Yunlin County, with garlic hit hardest (Taipei Times).

The storm now moves away. As of 5 p.m. Saturday, Champi sat about 320 km northeast of Taipei, moving north-northeast to northeast at 14 to 21 km/h with maximum sustained winds of 101 km/h and gusts up to 126 km/h, according to the CWA (Focus Taiwan). The agency lifted its land warning at 2:30 p.m. and its sea warning at 8:30 p.m., the Taipei Times reports, with the storm on a course toward southern Japan (Taipei Times). CWA forecaster Lin Ping-yu (林秉煜) said showers would taper off early Sunday and most areas would turn partly cloudy to sunny on Sunday and Monday, with some rain in the east (Focus Taiwan).

China prepared too. Reuters reports that China’s emergency management ministry sent a team to Zhejiang province, readied 400 rescue workers and 600 pieces of equipment, and put more than 41,000 firefighters on emergency duty; in the coastal city of Taizhou, more than 3,800 fishing boats returned to harbour and 2,084 island visitors left, state media reported, according to Reuters. Reuters adds that forecasters did not expect Champi to make landfall in China (Reuters via CNA). Seems News earlier covered Champi’s pass near Guam as a Category 4 storm.

This desk read Focus Taiwan, the Taipei Times and Reuters’ report as carried by CNA, plus three X video posts read through X’s API, as of about 1 p.m. PDT Saturday (4 a.m. Sunday in Taiwan). It did not read the CEOC’s or CWA’s own bulletins directly; the official figures above come through those outlets. The map above uses OpenStreetMap data; its storm arrow shows direction only, not a forecast track.