TAIPEI: Military servicemen are being deployed to disaster-prone areas of Taiwan as Typhoon Lupit zeroes in on the island, bringing torrential rains to northern Taiwan in its wake.

The head of the Executive Yuan Wu Den-yih said yesterday the servicemen will be in place by the time the storm arrives.

They will be mobilized and dispatched to vulnerable areas 36 hours before a typhoon land warning is issued. That will give authorities time to get a better understanding of the situation and to help reassure residents, Wu said while responding to questions at the Legislative Yuan.

Wu also indicated that Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau will help the Philippines set up a weather station on the island of Luzon in the future so that it can more closely monitor the direction of typhoons in the region and enhance its ability to forecast storms' paths.

Wu visited the weather bureau Monday morning to be briefed on the approaching storm. Weather bureau officials said he was the first head of the Executive Yuan ever to visit the bureau prior to a typhoon land warning being issued.

According to the weather bureau's forecast yesterday evening, Typhoon Lupit had been downgraded to a medium-strength typhoon, but it still threatens extremely heavy rains in eastern and northeastern Taiwan and in mountainous areas of northern Taiwan on Thursday and Friday.

The typhoon was moving in a westerly direction at 17 kilometers per hour.

Forecasters said that downpours from Lupit's periphery and an intensifying northeast monsoon are expected to start dumping rain in eastern and northern parts of Taiwan as early as today.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 10/21/2009 page2)