Workers mounted sandbag barriers and fishing boats returned to port as Taiwan braced for a pounding from Typhoon Fung-wong, which forecasters said was picking up momentum.
Taiwan is still reeling from storms earlier this month which left 20 people dead and six missing, and the Central Weather Bureau warned residents to take extra precautions against the oncoming typhoon.
Coastguard officials said they were searching for a fishing boat with four Taiwanese and a Chinese man which has been missing since Friday near Matsu, a Taiwan-controlled island group off China's south-eastern Fujian province.
With a radius of 220 kilometres (132 miles), it was measured packing gusts of 137 kilometres per hour. At 0700 GMT, the eye of the typhoon was around 310 kilometres south-east of Hualien city in Taiwan's east, where it is expected to make landfall on Monday morning.
Television images showed workers piling sandbags along a river in Wuje, a town in central Taiwan flooded by storm Kalmaegi earlier this month. President Ma Ying-jeou visited the central Nantou county which was plagued by landslides triggered by downpours from that storm.
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