Tag Archives: Power Outage

Kiev and Kremlin trade blame over surge in east Ukraine fighting

Russian/Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gives news briefing on Ukraine situation

KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia blamed each other on Tuesday for a surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine over recent days that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.

The Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists accuse each other of launching offensives in the government-held industrial town of Avdiyivka and firing heavy artillery in defiance of the two-year-old Minsk ceasefire deal.

Eight Ukrainian troops have been killed and 26 wounded since fighting intensified on Sunday – the heaviest losses for the military since mid-December, according to government figures.

“The current escalation in Donbass is a clear indication of Russia’s continued blatant disregard of its commitments under the Minsk agreements with a view of preventing the stabilization of the situation and achieving any progress in the security and humanitarian spheres,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The peace deal was agreed in February 2015, but international security monitors report ceasefire violations on a daily basis, including regular gun and mortar fire.

The latest clashes mark the first significant escalation in Ukraine since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose call for better relations with Moscow has alarmed Kiev while the conflict remains unresolved.

Ukrainian authorities said they were prepared for a possible evacuation of Avdiyivka’s 16,000 residents, many of whom have little or no access to electricity or water after shelling from the separatist side hit supply infrastructure.

Meanwhile Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian government troops had launched a deadly attack on pro-Russian rebels across the Avdiyivka front line on Monday.

“Such aggressive actions, supported by the armed forces of Ukraine, undermine the aims and the task of realizing the Minsk accords,” he said, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of organizing the offensive as a ruse to try to distract attention from domestic and other problems.

Close to 10,000 people have been killed since fighting between Ukrainian troops and rebels seeking independence from Kiev erupted in April 2014.

Ukraine and NATO accuse the Kremlin of supporting the rebels with troops and weapons. The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the conflict, as well as for its annexation of Crimea.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets in Kiev, Katya Golubkova in Moscow; Writing by Alessandra Prentice in Kiev and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Editing by Christian Lowe and Mark Trevelyan)

Ukraine’s power outage was a cyber attack: Ukrenergo

Dispatchers at Ukraine's national power company

By Pavel Polityuk, Oleg Vukmanovic and Stephen Jewkes

KIEV/MILAN (Reuters) – A power blackout in Ukraine’s capital Kiev last month was caused by a cyber attack and investigators are trying to trace other potentially infected computers and establish the source of the breach, utility Ukrenergo told Reuters on Wednesday.

When the lights went out in northern Kiev on Dec. 17-18, power supplier Ukrenergo suspected a cyber attack and hired investigators to help it determine the cause following a series of breaches across Ukraine.

Preliminary findings indicate that workstations and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, linked to the 330 kilowatt sub-station “North”, were influenced by external sources outside normal parameters, Ukrenergo said in comments emailed to Reuters.

“The analysis of the impact of symptoms on the initial data of these systems indicates a premeditated and multi-level invasion,” Ukrenergo said.

Law enforcement officials and cyber experts are still working to compile a chronology of events, draw up a list of compromised accounts, and determine the penetration point, while tracing computers potentially infected with malware in sleep mode, it said.

The comments make no mention of which individual, group or country may have been behind the attack.

“It was an intentional cyber incident not meant to be on a large scale… they actually attacked more but couldn’t achieve all their goals,” said Marina Krotofil, lead cyber-security researcher at Honeywell, who assisted in the investigation.

In December 2015, a first-of-its-kind cyber attack cut the lights to 225,000 people in western Ukraine, with hackers also sabotaging power distribution equipment, complicating attempts to restore power.

Ukrainian security services blamed that attack on Russia.

In the latest attack, hackers are thought to have hidden in Ukrenergo’s IT network undetected for six months, acquiring privileges to access systems and figure out their workings, before taking methodical steps to take the power offline, Krotofil said.

“The team involved had quite a few people working in it, with very serious tools and an engineer who understands the power infrastructure,” she said.

The attacks against Ukraine’s power grid are widely seen by experts as the first examples of hackers shutting off critical energy systems supplying heat and light to millions of homes.

(Writing by Oleg Vukmanovic; reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Oleg Vukmanovic and Stephen Jewkes in Milan; editing by Susan Fenton/Ruth Pitchford)

Ice storm targets central United States

empty runway at natioanal airport due to ice

Reuters) – An ice storm heading for the central United States is threatening to cause power outages and create treacherous travel conditions on Friday and into the weekend, the National Weather Service said.

Ice, freezing rain and winter storm warnings were in effect for a large swathe of the Plains, from the Texas panhandle north into Iowa and east through central Indiana, the Weather Service said in an advisory.

“Significant amounts of ice accumulations will make travel dangerous or impossible,” the weather service said. “Travel is strongly discouraged. Commerce will likely be severely impacted.”

Ice accumulation could be more than half an inch (1 cm) depending on local temperatures, creating slick roadways especially on bridges and overpasses, and possibly causing scattered power outages across the region, the service said.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for the entire state ahead of the storm.

“Emergency personnel are coordinating with state and local officials to ensure we are prepared and ready for whatever comes our way,” said Fallin.

A handful of public school districts and universities in Idaho, Oklahoma and other parts of the central region have either canceled classes on Friday or had delayed openings due to the impending storm.

Parts of the region could also see as much as 3 inches (8 cm) of snow later in the weekend, according to the forecast.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Bernadette Baum)

‘Utter devastation’ after major quake, aftershocks hit New Zealand

Landslide blocking road

By Charlotte Greenfield and Greg Stutchbury

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake pummeled central New Zealand early on Monday, killing at least two people, damaging roads and buildings and setting off hundreds of strong aftershocks.

Emergency response teams flew by helicopter to the region at the epicenter of the tremor, which struck just after midnight some 91 km (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings.

“It’s just utter devastation, I just don’t know … that’s months of work,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee after flying over the coastal town of Kaikoura, according to Brownlee’s Twitter account.

He described landslips in the area as “just horrendous”. In a statement seen by Reuters, Key said of the likely damage bill: “You’ve got to believe it’s in the billions of dollars to resolve.”

Powerlines and telecommunications were down, with huge cracks in roads, land slips and other damage to infrastructure making it hard to reach the worst-affected areas.

A tsunami warning that led to mass evacuations after the original quake was downgraded after large swells hit New Zealand’s capital Wellington, in the North Island, and Christchurch.

Wellington was a virtual ghost town with workers ordered to stay away while the city council assessed the risk to buildings, several of which were damaged by the tremor. There were concerns that loose glass and masonry could be dislodged by severe weather hitting the capital, with 140 km per hour (85 mph) winds forecast.

Hundreds of aftershocks, the strongest a 6.2 quake at about 1.45 p.m. local time (0045 GMT), rattled the South Pacific country, fraying nerves in an area where memories of a deadly 2011 quake are still fresh.

Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s ruggedly beautiful South Island, is still recovering from the 6.3 quake in 2011 that killed 185 people.

New Zealand’s Civil Defence declared a state of emergency for the Kaikoura region, centered on a tourist town about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Christchurch, soon after Monday’s large aftershock.

Kaikoura, a popular spot for whale watching, appeared to have borne the brunt of the quake.

“Our immediate priority is ensuring delivery of clean water, food and other essentials to the residents of Kaikoura and the estimated 1,000 tourists in the town,” Brownlee said.

The Navy’s multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury was heading to the area, he said.

Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) said a 20-person rescue team and two sniffer dogs had arrived in the town. A second team was on standby in Christchurch, USAR said in a statement.

Police in the area around Christchurch reported 19 burglaries of homes and commercial properties after the quake as residents headed for higher ground.

“It is extremely disappointing that at a time when people are facing such a traumatic event and communities are coming together to support one another, there are others who are only interested in taking advantage,” Canterbury District Commander Superintendent John Price said in a statement.

TWIN QUAKES

Hours after the quake, officials said a slip dam caused by the quakes that had blocked the Clarence River north of the town had breached, sending a wall of water downstream.

A group of kayakers missing on the river was later reported safe.

New Zealand’s Geonet measured Monday’s first quake at magnitude 7.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.8. The quakes and aftershocks rattled buildings and woke residents across the country, hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter.

Geonet said four faults had ruptured, with one at the coast appearing to have slipped as much as 10 meters (33 feet).

Government research unit GNS Science said the overnight tremor appeared to have been two simultaneous quakes which together lasted more than two minutes.

New Zealand lies in the seismically active “Ring of Fire”, a 40,000 km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur within this region.

Stock exchange operator NZX Ltd said markets traded normally, although many offices in the capital were closed. The New Zealand dollar initially fell to a one-month low before mostly recovering.

Fonterra, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, said some its farms were without power and would likely have to dump milk.

Prime Minister Key postponed a trip to Argentina, where he had planned to hold a series of trade meetings ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Peru this week, as he met disaster officials.

At least one of those killed was found in a house in Kaikoura that “collapsed like a stack of cards”, Kaikoura Hospital’s Dr Christopher Henry told Fairfax media. Two other people were pulled alive from the same building.

New Zealand media reported one of the pilots taking rescuers to the area was Richie McCaw, the recently retired captain of New Zealand’s world champion All Blacks rugby team.

“At one point, the railway was way out over the sea – it had been pushed out by (land) slips. It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night,” McCaw told the New Zealand Herald after helping fly the USAR team to Kaikoura.

(Additional reporting by Greg Stutchbury in WELLINGTON, Jamie Freed, Wayne Cole and Jane Wardell in SYDNEY; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Death toll climbs as floods swamp North Carolina after Hurricane Matthew

rescue workers during floods in North Carolina

(Adds additional death and other details on flooding)

By Carlo Allegri and Gene Cherry

LUMBERTON, N.C./KINSTON, N.C., Oct 11 (Reuters) – Flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew has displaced several thousand people in North Carolina, and authorities were helping more evacuate on Tuesday as swollen rivers threatened a wide swath of the state.

Governor Pat McCrory warned of “extremely dangerous” conditions in the coming days in central and eastern North Carolina, where several rivers were at record or near-record levels.

Matthew, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007, killed at least 1,000 people in Haiti last week before barreling up the U.S. southeastern coast and causing at least 30 deaths in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

McCrory’s office said four additional deaths were confirmed on Tuesday in North Carolina, raising the death toll in the state to 18. One person was reported as missing.

An additional U.S. death occurred on Monday night in Lumberton, North Carolina, where officials said a highway patrol officer fatally shot a man who became hostile and flashed a handgun during search-and-rescue efforts in fast-running floodwater.

Nearly 4,000 people have taken refuge in North Carolina shelters, including about 1,200 people in the hard-hit Lumberton area, where the Lumber River had crested at almost 4 feet (1.2 meters) above the prior record set in 2004 after Hurricane Frances.

Water blanketed the city of 21,000 people, leaving businesses flooded, homes with water up to their roof lines and drivers stranded after a stretch of Interstate-95 became impassable.

“We lost everything,” said Sarah McCallum, 62, who was staying in a shelter set up in an agricultural center after floodwaters drove her from her home of 20 years.

State officials are particularly concerned about victims like McCallum, who have no flood insurance because they do not live in areas typically prone to inundation. U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday signed a disaster declaration for North Carolina, which will make federal funding available to people in the hardest-hit areas.

Obama approved a similar declaration on Tuesday for South Carolina, where Matthew made landfall on Saturday. State officials are now urging residents to prepare for potential flooding from the Waccamaw and Little Pee Dee rivers.

About 532,000 homes and businesses remained without power in the U.S. Southeast on Tuesday, down from the peak of around 2.2 million on Sunday morning when the storm was still battering the Carolina coasts.

WORST FLOODING SINCE FLOYD

Matthew dumped more than a foot (30 cm) of rain in areas of North Carolina already soaked from heavy September rainfall. Ithas triggered the worst flooding in the state since Hurricane Floyd in September 1999, the National Weather Service said.

That storm caused devastating floods in North Carolina, resulting in 35 deaths, 7,000 destroyed homes and more than $3 billion in damages in the state.

In Matthew’s wake, officials are monitoring a number of overtopped or breaching dams in addition to the threat of inland river flooding, the governor’s office said.

Concerns about a potential breach of the Woodlake Dam, which led to overnight evacuations in the central North Carolina town of Spring Lake, had eased by Tuesday afternoon after it was reinforced with 700 sandbags, but a mandatory evacuation was still in effect for nearby residents.

McCrory warned that the Tar River was expected to crest on Wednesday in Greenville, where a mandatory evacuation order is already in place.

Officials remain concerned about Kinston, where significant flooding was already occurring from the Neuse River, which is expected to crest at about 27 feet (8 meters) on Saturday, just shy of the Floyd record.

Retired construction worker Wesley Turner, 71, said he fled his home near Kinston with his dogs on Friday after his power went out and the water quickly rose to about chest deep.

After several nights in a shelter, he did not know on Tuesday whether he had anything to return to.

“I can’t get to my house because it is under water,” Turner said.

(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein and Joseph Ax; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Trott, Tom Brown and Bill Rigby)

Typhoon cuts power, lashes China with wind and rain before weakening

People wading through flooded street after Typhoon Meranti

BEIJING (Reuters) – Typhoon Meranti slammed into southeastern China on Thursday with strong winds and lashing rain that cut power to 1.65 million homes, but there were no reports of more casualties in what has been described as the strongest storm of the year globally.

The storm, registered as a super typhoon before losing strength after sweeping across southern Taiwan, made landfall in the early hours near the major city of Xiamen.

Dozens of flights and train services have been canceled, state television said, disrupting travel at the start of the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

Pictures on state media showed flooded streets, fallen trees and crushed cars in Xiamen as rescuers in boats evacuated people.

About 320,000 homes were without power in Xiamen. Across the whole of Fujian province, where Xiamen is located, 1.65 million homes had no electricity, state television said.

Large sections of Xiamen also suffered water supply disruptions and some windows in tall buildings shattered, sending glass showering onto the ground below, state news agency Xinhua said.

The report said it was the strongest typhoon to hit that part of the country since the founding of Communist China in 1949 and the strongest so far this year anywhere in the world.

Tens of thousands of people had already been evacuated as the storm approached and fishing boats called back to port.

One person died and 38 were injured in Taiwan, the Central Emergency Operation Centre there said, as the typhoon hit the southern part of the island on Wednesday.

Meranti was a Category 5 typhoon, the strongest classification awarded by Tropical Storm Risk storm tracker, before it made landfall on the mainland and has since been downgraded to Category 2.

Typhoons are common at this time of year, picking up strength as they cross the warm waters of the Pacific and bringing fierce winds and rain when they hit land.

Meranti will continue to lose strength as it pushes inland and up toward China’s commercial capital of Shanghai, but will bring heavy rain.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Faith Hung in TAIPEI; Editing by Nick Macfie and Paul Tait)

Hermine hammers Florida, leaving thousands without power

Three storm systems

(Updates with Hermine being downgraded to tropical storm)

By Letitia Stein

TAMPA, Fla., Sept 2 (Reuters) – Wind and rain from Hurricane
Hermine slammed Florida’s northern Gulf Coast before it weakened
to a tropical storm and ploughed its way overland towards the
Atlantic Coast on Friday.

Hermine made landfall early on Friday, bringing heavy rains
and packing winds of 80 mph (130 km/h), causing damage and
leaving tens of thousands of households without power along
Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“It is a mess…we have high water in numerous places,”
Virgil Sandlin, the police chief in Cedar Key, Florida, told the
Weather Channel.

Strong gusts downed power lines and trees as widespread
flooding inundated communities in Florida before the hurricane
weakened into a tropical storm as it reached Georgia and South
Carolina, where conditions deteriorated early on Friday morning.

“The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the tide
will continue to cause normally dry areas near the coast to be
flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline,”
the National Hurricane Center said.

The center warned that some areas along Florida’s northern
Gulf Coast may experience 9 feet (3 m) of flooding.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said the storm could lead to
deaths and told residents to stay indoors until it had passed.

Pasco County reported crews rescued 18 people and brought
them to shelters after their homes were flooded in Green Key and
Hudson Beach early on Friday.

“Stay indoors even if it calm outside. The eye of Hermine
may be passing through. Let it pass completely before surveying
any damage,” Governor Scott advised residents in a Twitter post.

Hermine became the fourth hurricane of the 2016 Atlantic
storm season. By 11 p.m. EDT, maximum winds were listed at 80
mph (130 kph), with hurricane-force winds extending up to 45
miles (75 km) from the storm’s center.

Hermine could dump as much as 20 inches (51 cm) of rain in
some parts of the state. Ocean storm surge could swell as high
as 12 feet (3.6 meters).

Scott declared a state of emergency in 51 of Florida’s 67
counties, and at least 20 counties closed schools.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered in parts of five counties
in northwestern Florida, with voluntary evacuations in at least
three more counties. Twenty emergency shelters were opened
across the state for those displaced by the storm.

“This is life-threatening,” Scott told reporters on
Thursday.

In coastal Franklin County, people were evacuated from
barrier islands and low-lying shore areas.

“Those on higher ground are stocking up and hunkering down,”
Pamela Brownlee, the county’s emergency management director,
said.

The National Weather Service issued tornado and tropical
storm watches and warnings for communities throughout northern
Florida and north along Atlantic Coast, where it posed a Labor
Day weekend threat for tens of millions of people.

On its current path, the storm also could dump as much as 10
inches (25 cm) of rain on coastal areas of Georgia, which was
under a tropical storm watch, and the Carolinas. Forecasters
warned of “life-threatening” floods and flash floods there.

The governors of Georgia and North Carolina on Thursday
declared emergencies in affected regions. In South Carolina, the
low-lying coastal city of Charleston was handing out sandbags.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Laila
Kearney in New York and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Editing by
Angus MacSwan)

Delta cancels hundreds more flights, expects normal operations soon

Passengers check in at a counter of Delta Air Lines in Mexico City, Mexico, August 8, 2016.

(Reuters) – Delta Air Lines Inc on Wednesday canceled more than 250 flights and upended thousands of travelers’ plans for the third day in a row after a power outage hit its computer systems, though it forecast a return to normal operations later this afternoon.

Delta, the No. 2 U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said systems that allow customer service agents to process check-ins and dispatch aircraft are now functioning normally. Most of Wednesday’s delays and cancellations are the result of flight crews being displaced or running up against maximum allowed work hours, it said.

As of 12:30 p.m. EDT, Delta said it had canceled 278 flights on the day, adding to the more than 1,600 cancellations since Monday. Another 1,950 flights departed on Wednesday, with 75 percent of them within 30 minutes of their scheduled times, the airline said.

“We’re in the final hours of bouncing back from the disruption,” Bill Lentsch, Delta’s senior vice president for airport customer service and airline operations, said in an online posting.

The travel havoc at one of the world’s largest carriers has brought into focus the vulnerability of airlines’ technology infrastructure. Experts say mergers – and sometimes insufficient investment in back-end technology – have left airlines with a hodgepodge of systems.

What is more, a drive by companies to automate operations, from mobile boarding passes to check-in kiosks, means the impact of any single glitch will multiply.

Delta said problems arose when critical systems did not switch over to a backup source following a power surge and outage on Monday.

The airline is still investigating the cause, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said in an online video post, adding that the company has invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in infrastructure upgrades and backup systems.

“I’m sorry we let you down. We’ll do everything that we can to make certain this does not happen again,” Bastian said in the video.

“There have been no indications of a hack,” Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter added in an emailed statement.

Shares were down 1.5 percent at $36.40 in mid-afternoon trading.

PASSENGERS FRUSTRATED

Frustrated fliers like Camille Davies-Mandel of Maplewood, New Jersey still faced multihour waits at airport lines on Wednesday.

“I have two kids with me, looking forward to getting to their cousins so they can seek out (characters) in Pokemon Go,” she said in a telephone interview after waiting three hours to check in at Newark Liberty International Airport. She was unable to download a boarding pass online and missed her flight.

Davies-Mandel said she appreciated Delta’s outreach on social media and messages from management, but she added “when you get on the phone and you deal with their customer service, that’s a whole different experience,” noting two calls took her four and a half hours.

Delta said it contacted some of its most frequent fliers who would be stuck in the disruption and offered them seats on its Delta Private Jets subsidiary to finish their journey.

Analysts expect passenger refunds, overtime hours for workers and other costs will reduce Delta’s profit this quarter. Daniel McKenzie, an analyst with the Buckingham Research Group said in a research note that earnings per share may be 5 percent to 10 percent lower, or 10 to 15 cents per share, lower than his than his prior estimate.

“Delta still remains the best operation in the industry by a wide margin,” McKenzie said, noting that the airline had canceled far fewer flights than rivals in recent years.

Other carriers have also suffered from technology issues.

Southwest Airlines Co forecast on Wednesday a further drop in a key profitability metric for the quarter due to delays and cancellations of more than 2,000 flights after an outage hit its computer systems in July.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin, additional reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; editing by Maju Samuel and G Crossa)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delta flights resume after computer crash strands passengers

elta airline name tags are seen at Delta terminal in JFK Airport in New York

(Reuters) – Delta Air Lines flights gradually began taking off again on Monday after computer systems crashed, causing planes to be grounded and leaving passengers of one of the world’s largest carriers stranded at airports around the globe.

The U.S. airline said the problems resulted from a power outage in Atlanta overnight and that customers should expect “large-scale” cancellations.

Delta said in an update at 8:40 a.m. EDT (1240 GMT) that a halt on departures had been lifted and some flights were resuming.

“Customers heading to the airport should expect delays and cancellations,” it added.

Website Flightradar24 showed a flight from Phoenix to Atlanta had taken off, while three planes had departed from Amsterdam to U.S. destinations.

The problems also meant flight information was not showing correctly on Delta’s website or on airport information boards, and this could also take time to resolve, the carrier said in the latest update.

Delta operates 5,000 departures a day and is a member of the SkyTeam alliance alongside airlines including Air France.

It also partners for transatlantic flights with Virgin Atlantic, which said its flights were operating normally but cautioned that passengers should check tickets in case their flight was due to be operated by Delta as part of a code-share agreement.

Delta said the computer outage began at about 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT).

Its shares were down 1.1 percent at $37.25 in premarket trading.

In airports across the world, passengers stuck in check-in queues or on planes waiting to depart took to Twitter to share photos and frustration at the delays.

“1 hr.+ lines @HeathrowAirport for @Delta due to system outage,” tweeted user @MITJAKE with a picture of passengers waiting to check in.

The glitch follows several high-profile computer problems faced by U.S. airlines in the past year.

Budget carrier Southwest Airlines Co had to halt departures last month after a technical outage, while American Airlines had to suspend flights from three of its hubs last September after technical problems.

Industry consultants say airlines face an increasing risk from computer disruptions as they automate more of their operations, distribute boarding passes on smartphones and fit their planes with Wi-Fi.

(Reporting by Victoria Bryan in Berlin and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Sarah Young in London; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Super typhoon hits Taiwan, cutting power and transport

Damage from Typhoon Nepartak

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Super typhoon Nepartak hit Taiwan on Friday, driving thousands of people from their homes, disrupting power supplies and grounding more than 600 flights, authorities said.

Television showed toppled motorcycles and signboards being ripped from buildings and swept across roads in southeast Taiwan, where the year’s first typhoon made landfall.

By afternoon, the typhoon had moved into the Taiwan Strait, weakening as it headed towards China’s southeastern province of Fujian, but flooding and strong winds continued to lash the island’s central and southern areas.

More than 17,300 people were evacuated from their homes, and over 517,000 households suffered power outages, emergency officials said.

“The wind is very strong,” said a resident of Taitung, the eastern Taiwan city where the typhoon landed.

“Many hut roofs and signs have been blown off.”

Three deaths and 172 injuries were reported, bullet train services were suspended and over 340 international and 300 domestic flights canceled, an emergency services website showed.

The typhoon halted work in most of Taiwan. There were no reports of damage at semiconductor plants in the south.

Tropical Storm Risk had rated the typhoon as category 5, at the top of its ranking, but it was weakening and should be a tropical storm by the time it hits Fujian on Saturday morning.

More than 4,000 people working on coastal fish farms in Fujian were evacuated and fishing boats recalled to port, the official China News Service said.

The storm is expected to worsen already severe flooding in parts of central and eastern China, particularly in the major city of Wuhan.

Typhoons are common at this time of year in the South China Sea, picking up strength over warm waters and dissipating over land.

In 2009, Typhoon Morakot cut a swathe of destruction through southern Taiwan, killing about 700 people and causing damage of up to $3 billion.

(Reporting by Faith Hung and J.R. Wu; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Andrew Roche)