Typhoon Mawar lashes eastern Taiwan and northern Philippines from the sea

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YILAN, Taiwan (AP) — Typhoon Mawar battered the eastern coast of Taiwan with wind, rain and heavy waves, though it largely missed the island after brushing across the northern Philippines. The storm was moving slowly toward southern Japan.

As waves crashed against the shore, residents of the Taiwanese fishing town of Yilan secured boats and homes against the storm.

Although the typhoon had lost some of its strength in the slow progress since it struck Guam last week, forecasters in the Philippines said it remained dangerous, with maximum sustained winds of 155 kilometers (96 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 190 kilometers. (118 miles) per hour.

“I’m on the roof, but the wind isn’t blowing me away,” Juliet Cataluna, a provincial official for Batanes in the coastal town of Ivana, told the Associated Press by phone. “Hopefully we really get rid of damage, our livelihoods, our agricultural production and our houses.”

Following earlier forecasts that Mawar would hit the region harder, people in Ivana put sandbags on their metal roofs and boarded up their glass windows. Cataluna added that she had wrapped her avocados in sackcloth so they wouldn’t be ripped from the trees.

City officials used motorcycles to keep up a constant flow of news about the typhoon, and luckily there had only been light rain and gusts in Ivana, he said.

The typhoon was centered at sea about 350 kilometers (217 miles) east of Batanes’ capital Basco and was expected to turn northeast on Wednesday toward southern Japan. Strong winds were still expected in Taiwan and Philippine authorities warned people not to get confident as the risk of dangerous surf, flooding, landslides and monsoon rains aggravated by the typhoon would continue until the system receded.

More than 3,400 people remained in emergency shelters in northern provinces, flights to and from Batanes were still suspended and classes have not yet resumed in more than 250 cities and towns in the north, according to the Civil Defense Office.

Winds lashed the nearby province of Cagayan on Monday, causing a port warehouse to collapse and sending more people rushing to evacuation centers.

Mawar slammed into Guam last week, the strongest typhoon to hit the Pacific US mainland in two decades, flipping cars, ripping off roofs and causing power outages.