Residents scrambled to stockpile food and authorities ordered ships to remain docked as southern China geared up yesterday for a typhoon that killed 20 people and wiped out crops in the northern Philippines.

Typhoon Megi packed winds of 225 kilometers per hour when it struck the Philippines on Monday. Philippine officials reported 20 deaths, including several people who drowned after being pinned by fallen trees. The storm damaged thousands of homes and flooded vast areas of rice and corn fields.

Late yesterday, Megi was about 550 kilometers southeast of the southern financial hub of Hong Kong and expected to eventually hit the southern coast, the Hong Kong Observatory said on its website.

The storm's winds have weakened to 175 kph, but are expected to build strength over the next two days before losing steam again on Saturday, when the typhoon is projected to make landfall in Guangdong Province, the observatory said.

In Guangdong, officials have ordered all fishing boats back to shore, put the provincial flood control headquarters on alert and warned that reservoirs should be watched, the Xinhua news agency reported.

In the southern island province of Hainan, residents rushed to supermarkets to stock up on food, vegetables and bottled water.

In Hong Kong, the mood was calmer in the densely populated city of 7 million whose infrastructure has traditionally held up well against the annual summer barrage of typhoons.

Still, the Hong Kong Observatory urged residents to make sure their windows could be properly bolted, avoid the coastline and refrain from water sports. It also ordered small vessels to return to shore.

In the Philippines, more than 215,000 people were affected by the typhoon, including 10,300 people who fled to evacuation centers, officials said. About US$30 million worth of infrastructure and crops were damaged and nearly 5,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by Megi, according to the government's main disaster-response agency.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, where recent flooding has killed at least 45 people, soldiers and police found a bus that was carrying dozens of people when it was washed away by flood waters, disaster officials said.

Twenty people are still missing, and officials did not say how many bodies they found.

Up to 1.4 meters of rain pounded the region in the past week, submerging more than 220,000 houses and forcing more than 173,000 people to flee their homes.

• yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
• financial [fi´nænʃəl] a.金融的，财政的 (初中英语单词)
• province [´prɔvins] n.省；领域；范围 (初中英语单词)
• headquarters [´hed,kwɔ:təz] n.总部(署)，司令部 (初中英语单词)
• agency [´eidʒənsi] n.代理商；机构；代理 (初中英语单词)
• annual [´ænjuəl] a.每年的 n.年刊 (初中英语单词)
• properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
• meanwhile [´mi:n´wail] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
• disaster [di´zɑ:stə] n.灾难，不幸 (初中英语单词)
• missing [´misiŋ] a.缺掉的；失踪的 (初中英语单词)
• philippines [´filipi:nz] n.菲律宾 (高中英语单词)
• refrain [ri´frein] v.抑制；忍住 n.迭句 (高中英语单词)
• southeast [,sauθ´i:st] n.&a.东南(方) (英语四级单词)
• eventually [i´ventʃuəli] ad.最后，终于 (英语四级单词)
• fishing [´fiʃiŋ] n.钓鱼；捕鱼；渔业 (英语四级单词)
• provincial [prə´vinʃəl] a.省的 n.外省人 (英语四级单词)
• observatory [əb´zə:vətəri] n.天文台；气象台 (英语六级单词)
• densely [´densli] ad.密集地；浓厚地 (英语六级单词)
• affected [ə´fektid] a.做作的；假装的 (英语六级单词)