Emergency response teams and technicians continue to work today, mainly to restore electricity to more than 56,000 families in Taiwan, which was hit by the Chubi typhoon, now heading towards China and Japan.

More than 5,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes before the storm arrived. Trees were uprooted, power lines fell, and short floods were reported.

About 56,000 families were left without electricity, while Xabi continued to hit the island. About 12 inches [24 cm] of rain were registered today in Miaoli County, on the western part of the island.

One person has died, and more than 500 others have been injured since Thursday, when the government began to issue warnings as the typhoon approached.

Xabi was briefly classified as a supertayphoon because it was above the ocean, with winds reaching up to 200 miles [300 km] an hour but gradually weakened.

The winds it brings are now reaching up to 176 km/h, according to the latest warning bulletin from the Common Urans Warning Centre.

In China several railway connections were suspended, and tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Shanghai.

State media reported heavy-to-grained fighting in parts of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and other provinces.

Tens of flights were cancelled in the region, particularly in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture, where authorities reported two injuries due to the typhoon.

Xabi joins a series of hurricanes in this particularly intense period of extreme phenomena of this kind in the Pacific, attributed to El Niño, since this year the ocean waters at the equator are being overheated to a level that, according to scientists, is unprecedented.

Xabi has now fled, some 150 miles [150 km] east of the island.