Sawt Falasteen - 'Everything broken': Chinese residents in typhoon path assess damage

Ferocious winds that lasted several hours battered the city of more than two million people in densely populated Guangdong Province, ripping down trees, destroying fences and tearing signs off buildings.

Emerging after the typhoon's strongest gales had moved on, stunned residents moved cautiously around their neighbourhoods, taking pictures of the damage and chatting with other locals.

"I was definitely worried. It's scary, isn't it?" said Huang Ze, a 42-year-old man who works in Yangjiang.

"I am worried about having to take care of the children," he said.

Huang, whose home lost power during the typhoon, showed AFP small torches that fit in his pocket, which he planned to use during dinner.

Earlier on Wednesday, Typhoon Ragasa swept past Hong Kong, with the city's weather service ranking the storm the strongest yet in the northwestern Pacific this year.

But it did not make landfall until late afternoon near Yangjiang -- about 230 kilometres (143 miles) to the west.

The weather service said that at the time of landfall, the maximum wind speed near the centre of the storm was 145 kilometres per hour (90 miles per hour).

- 'So huge' -

Tall fallen trees partially blocked one of the main roads leading out of the city centre shortly after the typhoon's ferocious winds died down, AFP journalists saw.

The Yangjiang train station -- normally bustling with activity, locals said -- stood empty, with rail travel suspended Wednesday across Guangdong.

More than 1.89 million people across different cities in the province had been relocated as of Tuesday night, its emergency management said in an online statement.

At one neighbourhood grocery store in Yangjiang, residents stepped gingerly through a narrow gap in a metal door that had fallen over the entrance.

Inside, the shopkeeper had placed a few torches to provide some light for the customers that had started to filter in to stock up on essential supplies during the power outage.

"It was so huge," the 74-year-old woman, surnamed Wang, told AFP about the recently passed typhoon.

Wang said that her own home lost electricity when the typhoon's winds struck. She found out later that her store had also suffered significant damage.

"I didn't know that the door was broken," she said.

"Someone told me -- they called my son -- and said 'your door was damaged'.

"I came out and saw everything broken."

U.Shaheen--SF-PST