BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Coastal areas of eastern China were bracing for strong winds and torrential rain as Typhoon Dolphin approached, prompting authorities to recall fishing boats, suspend ferry services and prepare for evacuations.
China's meteorological authority on Saturday upgraded its emergency response for Dolphin to Level III and raised the typhoon warning from yellow to orange.
The typhoon is expected to make landfall along the coast between Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province and Fuding in Fujian Province from Sunday night to Monday morning.
Zhejiang raised its typhoon emergency response to the second-highest level Saturday. More than 4,000 local monitors have been deployed to inspect over 7,500 areas considered at risk of landslides and other geological disasters.
The province had suspended services on all 162 of its passenger ferry routes, halted work at all 193 offshore projects, and called 474 construction vessels to port by Friday morning.
In Fujian Province, authorities had suspended 40 passenger ferry routes and halted work at 115 offshore construction sites by Saturday noon. All 1,210 registered fishing boats in the coastal city of Fuding had returned to port.
Shanghai issued a blue typhoon alert Friday, with forecasters warning that the storm could bring strong winds and heavy rain to the city for as long as four days. Some train services in the Yangtze River Delta will be suspended from Sunday.
Compared with Typhoon Bavi, which made landfall in the country in July, Typhoon Dolphin may bring stronger winds and heavier rainfall, said Xu Yinglong, chief forecaster at the National Meteorological Center.
China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system for typhoons, with red representing the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue. It also has a four-tier emergency response system, with Level I being the highest. ■
