Nearly 2 million people were forced from their homes as Typhoon Bavi, the most powerful storm to strike mainland China this year, battered eastern China and Taiwan on Saturday and Sunday, leaving 134 people injured in Taiwan and triggering one of the region's largest emergency evacuations in recent memory.
The scale of the evacuation—concentrated mostly in Zhejiang province—underscores how vulnerable coastal communities remain to extreme weather, even with advance warning systems. Taiwan's fire department reported that the 134 injuries were mainly from falling off motorbikes, slipping, or being struck by objects. No deaths were reported on the island, a outcome officials attributed to preparation and evacuation efforts.
Bavi struck Zhejiang's coastal city of Yuhuan at around 11:20 p.m. on Saturday, before making a second landfall in Yueqing, part of the city of Wenzhou, at around midnight. By Sunday morning, the storm had weakened to a tropical storm as it pushed inland, but forecasters warned it could unleash prolonged and widespread rainfall across eastern and northern China in the coming days.
The Ground-Level Reality
The human cost of the storm became visible in the hours after landfall. Yueqing resident Li Liangxing described the moment Bavi hit: "When it made landfall last night, the winds were very strong. We could hear roof tiles and tree branches falling. Of course we were scared, but we live by the sea, so we're used to it." He gestured toward a flooded canal beside his residential compound that he'd never seen rise so high. "There used to be a walkway there, but now it's underwater," he said.
More than 1,300 trees fell across Yueqing, with more than 700 of them uprooted entirely, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The deepest flooding reached roughly half the height of a vehicle tire. Emergency crews on Sunday deployed excavators and chainsaws to clear waterlogged streets littered with fallen trees. In the city's mountainous north, footage aired by CCTV showed a landslide that sent large boulders tumbling onto a mountain road, while swollen river waters submerged nearby trees.
Infrastructure and Economic Disruption
The storm's impact on transportation networks was severe and immediate. In Zhejiang's provincial capital, Hangzhou, two major train stations suspended all services and 327 flights were cancelled at Xiaoshan International Airport. In neighbouring Shanghai, a total of 1,620 train trips and 684 flights were cancelled, according to state-backed reporting. Taiwan's transport ministry reported that 137 international flights were cancelled on Sunday, along with 62 domestic trips.
Benjamin Horton, the dean of the School of Energy and Environment at the City University of Hong Kong, warned that regions near Bavi's path could receive several hundred millimetres of rain in a matter of days, raising the risk of flooding, landslides and urban inundation. "Even if the storm weakens after landfall, its large circulation can continue to generate destructive weather hundreds of kilometres inland," he said.
Horton also highlighted a growing concern for emergency management: "Rapid intensification of typhoons reduces preparation time for communities and emergency managers, making these events particularly challenging." Scientists have warned China could face more extreme weather this year with the expected emergence of the El Niño weather pattern, which can drive up temperatures and shift typhoon tracks westward toward the country's coast.
The storm dumped nearly 80 centimetres, or 31 inches, of rain in one area in the northern Taiwan county of Miaoli, demonstrating the unpredictable and intense nature of these systems even as they weaken.
Why This Matters:
Typhoon Bavi reveals both the success and limits of disaster preparedness in the region. The near-zero death toll in Taiwan and the large-scale evacuation in China suggest that early warning systems and public coordination can save lives. Yet the scale of evacuation—nearly 2 million people—and the widespread injuries in Taiwan demonstrate that even prepared communities face significant disruption and risk. The storm's intensity and the scientist's warning about rapid intensification reducing preparation time point to a critical infrastructure challenge: as extreme weather events become more frequent and unpredictable, communities need not just better evacuation systems but also resilient infrastructure, accessible emergency services, and long-term climate adaptation planning. The disruption to transport networks affecting thousands of flights and train trips also highlights how dependent modern economies are on stable weather—a vulnerability that will grow as climate patterns shift.