Typhoon Gaemi reached southeastern China on Thursday night as rescue personnel searched for six sailors still missing after a cargo ship sank in bad weather near Taiwan.

According to China’s Fujian Meteorological Bureau, the typhoon made landfall in Putian, Fujian province, at 7:50 p.m. local time with reported wind speeds of around 73 mph, the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

Earlier, the tropical cyclone had slammed into Taiwan on Wednesday night with wind speeds equivalent to those of a Category 3 Atlantic hurricane. It submerged roads, led to flight cancellations, and forced the closing of schools and businesses.

As of Thursday the storm had killed at least 15 people in the Philippines, officials said. In Taiwan, at least four people were dead and 531 were injured.

Flooding was reported across southern Taiwan on Thursday. In an upscale area of the city of Kaohsiung, floodwaters submerged parked vehicles and many roads were inaccessible. In nearby Tainan, residents struggled to escape submerged houses.

There was trouble at sea, too.

A Tanzanian cargo ship sank early Thursday near Kaohsiung, officials on the island said. A rescue operation began for nine missing crew members, all of them from Myanmar, and by nightfall three of them had been rescued, according to Taiwan’s coast guard. Five other ships were reported to be stranded near Taiwan.

A tanker carrying fuel oil also sank off the coast of the Philippines on Thursday, as the cyclone’s remnants complicated efforts to prevent the ship’s contents from spilling into the water. Sixteen crew members were rescued, and at least one person died.

Gaemi was moving across the Taiwan Strait early Thursday afternoon. It was expected to make landfall in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian in the late afternoon or evening with the force of a Category 1 hurricane.

Taiwan, an island of about 23 million people, lies about 100 miles from the Chinese mainland.

In China, authorities in Fuzhou, Fujian’s provincial capital, banned group gatherings, closed schools and tourist attractions, and ordered the closure of nonessential businesses as the storm neared.

Other coastal Chinese provinces were evacuating tourists and asking ships to take shelter.

The storm was forecast to bring heavy rainfall to other parts of China, including Beijing, while moving inland over the next five days, the China Meteorological Administration said. Southern China has already faced weeks of heavy rain and deadly flooding.

The typhoon also brought hurricane-force winds to islands in the Yaeyama region of Okinawa prefecture in Japan. Forecasters said that people in Yaeyama should expect to see some houses destroyed, and to prepare for heavy downpours, mudslides and flooded rivers.

In Taiwan, some local weather stations were recording more than 4 feet of rain from Typhoon Gaemi as of Thursday afternoon. The island’s Central Weather Administration estimated that the storm could drop more than 7 feet of total rainfall.