At least three people died and dozens were injured as Typhoon Maysak battered Russia’s Far East on Thursday, local authorities said.
Video footage also showed the storm unmooring a floating dry dock, causing it to slam into the Russian Navy’s warships and submarines in Russia’s Primorye region 6,500 kilometers east of Moscow.
Regional prosecutors said two of nine crew members were killed when a floating crane beached onto Ussuri Bay. The regional administration said one man was killed by a falling tree in a nearby village, bringing the known death toll from the typhoon to three.
At least 55 people sought medical attention, mostly for bruises and foreign objects in the eye, the Primorye administration said.
More than 150,000 of the region’s 1.9 million residents have been left without power, state media reported, as high winds reached speeds of up to 43 meters per second.
Dramatic eyewitness video footage showed winds tearing roofs off homes, bystanders being hit by debris and upturned eighteen-wheelers causing traffic congestion.
In addition to the free-floating dry dock, Typhoon Maysak was reported to have unmoored several other ships. One of them, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported, was an arrested North Korean fishing boat whose 12-member crew is on trial in Russia for illegal fishing.
Typhoon Maysak smashed into the Korean Peninsula on Thursday, killing at least two people and canceling or delaying flights.
It was the ninth typhoon of the season and the fourth to hit the peninsula in 2020, according to Reuters. A 10th typhoon is expected to hit the Korean coast in the next few days, the news agency cited NASA’s Earth Observatory as saying.
“Extremely warm water of the tropical Western Pacific” is believed to have caused the string of storms, NASA was quoted as saying.
