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ASSOCIATED PRESS
An electric pole remains leaning Wednesday Oct. 20, 2010 at Ilagan township two days after typhoon Megi barreled Isabela province and nearby provinces in northeastern Philippines. Megi, the strongest typhoon to hit the country this year, left at least 10 people dead and widespread damage to agriculture and homes.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A giant Buddha statue is submerged at a flooded temple in Ayutthaya province, central Thailand Wednesday. Disaster officials in Thailand say nine people have died from flooding that began over the weekend. The government's Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department says the flooding has affected nearly 4,000 villages in 19 eastern, central and northeastern provinces.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Residents remove trees that fell on their house Tuesday at Cauayan township, a day after typhoon Megi (local name "Juan") barreled through Isabela province in northeastern Philippines. The super typhoon dumped heavy rains over the Philippine capital Tuesday after killing at least 10 people, creating a wasteland of fallen trees in the north and sending thousands scrambling to safety in near-zero visibility.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A boat sails past docked ships at a port in Haikou, in south China's Hainan province, Wednesday. Residents scrambled to stockpile food and authorities ordered ships to remain docked as southern China geared up Wednesday for a super typhoon after it killed 15 people and wiped out crops in the northern Philippines.
HONG KONG — Residents stockpiled food and ships were ordered to dock Wednesday as southern China braced for a typhoon that has already lashed the northern Philippines amid floods that have killed more than 70 people across Asia.
Typhoon Megi packed winds of 140 miles per hour when it struck the Philippines on Monday. Philippine officials reported 20 deaths, including several people who drowned after being pinned by fallen trees. The storm damaged thousands of homes and flooded vast areas of rice and corn fields.
Late Wednesday, Megi was about 350 miles southeast of the southern financial hub of Hong Kong and expected to eventually hit the southern Chinese coast, the Hong Kong Observatory said on its website.
The storm’s winds have weakened to 110 mph, but are expected to build strength over the next two days before losing steam again Saturday, when the typhoon is projected to make landfall in China’s Guangdong province, the observatory said.
In Guangdong, officials have ordered all fishing boats back to shore, put the provincial flood control headquarters on alert and warned that reservoirs should be watched, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. In the southern island province of Hainan, residents rushed to supermarkets to stock up on food, vegetables and bottled water, Xinhua said.
In Hong Kong, the mood was calmer in the densely populated city of 7 million whose infrastructure has traditionally held up well against the annual summer barrage of typhoons. Still, the Hong Kong Observatory urged residents to make sure their windows could be properly bolted, avoid the coastline and refrain from water sports. It also ordered small vessels to return to shore.
In the Philippines, more than 215,000 people were affected by the typhoon, including 10,300 people who fled to evacuation centers, officials said. About $30 million worth of infrastructure and crops were damaged and nearly 5,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by Megi’s ferocious wind, according to the government’s main disaster-response agency.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, where recent flooding from a different weather system has killed at least 45 people over the past week, soldiers and police found a bus that was carrying dozens of people when it was washed away by flood waters, disaster officials said Wednesday. It was located on a river bed, a half a mile downstream from where it was yanked off the road. Twenty people who failed to escape the bus before it was inundated are missing, presumed dead.
Up to 4.5 feet of rain pounded the region in the past week, submerging more than 220,000 houses and forcing more than 173,000 people to flee their homes, according to the national flood and storm control committee.
In Thailand, floods have killed nine people since the weekend. Runoff of those waters were due to sweep down the Chao Phraya river into the capital, Bangkok, late Wednesday.
Bangkok Deputy Gov. Porntep Techaipaibul said that officials have prepared more than 4 million sandbags amid fears of serious floods in parts of the city, particularly during high tides next week.
Authorities say the flooding has affected nearly 4,000 villages in 19 eastern, central and northeastern provinces. More heavy rains — the tail end of the annual monsoon — are forecast, including in some central provinces.
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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila, Chi-chi Zhang in Beijing, Tran Van Minh in Hanoi and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
