South China city shuts down as it braces for typhoon

BEIJING (Reuters) – The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou closed offices, factories and schools on Monday as it braces for Typhoon Nida, forecast to make landfall on Tuesday.

Level one emergency response measures require the closures for the next 24 hours, the city government said in a statement on its official microblog, as authorities anticipated “a serious impact” from the storm.

“All emergency rescue and disaster response units, please adopt measures to ensure preparation work for the provision of water, electricity, gas, transport, communications, civil administration, medical treatment, epidemic prevention and food supply and other disaster relief efforts,” it said.

Authorities in the southern provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Yunnan, as well as the region of Guangxi, have enacted emergency response and early warning measures, the official Xinhua news agency said.

CNOOC Limited, China’s state-controlled offshore oil and gas producer, suspended some production operations. Since Friday, it has evacuated nearly 2,200 offshore personnel in the South China Sea to land by helicopter, the company said on its microblog.

Typhoon Nida will be the fourth typhoon this year to hit China, where natural disasters have killed 800 people since June – the largest number of casualties since a similar period in 2011.

Last month, Typhoon Nepartak drove at least 420,000 Chinese from their homes and caused more than 7.1 billion yuan ($1.07 billion) in losses in Fujian province alone.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)