MANILA — The Chinese city of Shenzhen began preparing to evacuate 400,000 people while residents of the northern Philippines sought shelter from gale-force winds today as Super Typhoon Ragasa continued on a collision course with southern China.

The typhoon made landfall on the Philippines’ Calayan Island, part of the sparsely populated Babuyan chain, at 3pm (0700 GMT/3pm Malaysian time), according to the Philippine weather service.

As of 2pm (0600 GMT), maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometres per hour were reported at the storm’s center, with gusts reaching as high as 295 kph, the national weather service said.

“I woke up because of the strong wind. It was hitting the windows, and it sounded like a machine that was switched on,” said Tirso Tugagao, a resident of Aparri, a coastal town in northern Cagayan province.

Cagayan disaster chief Rueli Rapsing told AFP his team was prepared for “the worst”.

Just over 10,000 Filipinos were evacuated across the country, with schools and government offices closed Monday in the Manila region and across 29 other provinces.

A much larger operation will take place in China’s Shenzhen, where authorities said late yesterday they planned to move hundreds of thousands of people from coastal and low-lying regions.

Multiple other cities in Guangdong province announced classes and work would be cancelled, and public transportation suspended because of the typhoon.

Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific said it expected to cancel more than 500 flights as Ragasa threatened the financial hub.

A spokeswoman for the airline said passenger flights in and out of Hong Kong International Airport would be halted from 6pm tomorrow, “resuming during daytime hours on Thursday”.