| Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Nesat, the strongest to hit China this year, forced the evacuation of 300,000 people, grounded flights and closed markets as it swept past Hong Kong, slammed into the Chinese island of Hainan and headed to Vietnam. The typhoon, which killed at least 39 people in the Philippines earlier this week, made landfall in Hainan province at 2:30 p.m. local time yesterday with winds as fast as 151 kilometers (94 miles) an hour, the China Meteorological Administration said. In Hong Kong, the storm felled trees, ripped bamboo scaffolding from buildings and forced the city's stock exchange to halt trading after the highest storm warning in two years was issued. Trading will resume today. Gale force winds and torrential rains lashed Hainan as provincial authorities rushed to move residents out of areas judged dangerous, ordered ships back to port and halted flights and high-speed rail services. Moving west, the typhoon may reach the coast of Vietnam by tomorrow, where four people were killed and 5,000 hectares of farmland flooded earlier this week by Tropical Storm Haitang. The storm landed in Xuwen County in Guangdong at 9:15 p.m. yesterday, Xinhua News Agency said. Hong Kong's No. 8 storm warning was reduced to a strong wind signal at 5 p.m. local time with Nesat 450 kilometers (280 miles) away, according to the city's observatory. It canceled all signals at 6:25 a.m. A total of 25 people sought medical treatment at Hong Kong public hospitals during the passage of the typhoon, the government said. The police launched an air and sea search after a yachtsman went missing near the outlying Lamma Island yesterday morning, the South China Morning Post reported. Storm Damage The city received at least 15 reports of loose or falling scaffolding and about 400 reports of fallen trees. No flooding or landslides were reported, the government said. About 50 residents in the city's Chai Wan district were evacuated when a dredger crashed into a seawall, the Standard newspaper said. At 4 a.m. today, the storm was about 590 kilometers west- southwest of Hong Kong and was forecast to move west-northwest toward northern Vietnam at 16 kilometers per hour, the observatory said. In Hainan, authorities evacuated about 58,000 residents around Wengtian township where Nesat made landfall, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Rainfall from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time had exceed 100 millimeters (3.9 inches) in 72 townships in the province, and fueled concerns about flooding, according to Xinhua. There were no reports of deaths or injuries. Cnooc Halt Cnooc Ltd., China's largest offshore energy explorer, shut down part of its operations in the South China Sea yesterday because of the typhoon. Operations will resume as soon as possible, spokesman Jiang Yongzhi said by e-mail. Nesat is striking Hainan, home to tropical resort cities such as Sanya, before the weeklong National Day holiday that starts Oct. 1. Authorities halted all flights and high-speed rail services to Sanya. In the Haikou city airport, 143 flights were canceled and 32 delayed, Xinhua said. In Hong Kong, the airport canceled 35 flights, diverted 31 to land in nearby locations and delayed 381 others due to the typhoon as of 7 p.m. local time yesterday, according to a Hong Kong Airport Authority spokeswoman, who declined to be identified because of the agency's rules. Most public transportation in Hong Kong had resumed by the evening as the city prepared for the return of thousands of workers to the financial district that was cleared by the storm. Trawling Taxis Those who did go to their offices yesterday morning found the financial district "like a dark, wet, ghost town," said Gavin Parry, managing director of brokerage Parry International Trading Ltd. Parry, who walked to work, said there were few minibuses, no public buses and taxis were "trawling for passengers to pay an extra HK$100 fare." HSBC Holdings Plc closed at least 100 branches, Laine Santana, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for the bank, said. Standard Chartered Plc shuttered at least 75, said Gabriel Kwan, a spokeswoman. Hong Kong has endured fewer tropical storms in the past two years, with seven in 2011 and 11 the previous year, compared with 28 in 2009. Typhoon Muifa caused almost 3 billion yuan ($469 million) of direct economic losses in China in August, according to Xinhua. In Vietnam, officials warned that flooding in the Mekong Delta will peak in the next few days with water levels as high as 4.9 meters. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked provincial authorities to pro-actively evacuate residents from areas at risk of landslides and floods, according to a statement on the government's website. Authorities also banned boats in the northern provinces from going out to sea. --With assistance by Kana Nishizawa, Marco Lui, Guo Aibing and Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong, Jin Jing, Stephanie Wong, Jiang Jianguo in Shanghai, Chua Baizhen, Penny Peng in Beijing, Diep Ngoc Pham in Hanoi. Editors: John Liu, Joshua Fellman, Niamh Ring To contact the reporters on this story: Stephanie Tong in Hong Kong at stong17@bloomberg.net; Michelle Yun in Hong Kong at myun11@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Hwee Ann Tan at hatan@bloomberg.net Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/09/29/bloomberg_articlesLSB6SI6K50XX.DTL#ixzz1ZP0A7vdY |