Tropical Storm Prapiroon swept across south China, leaving a trail of destruction with more than 70 people reported dead or missing by Sunday.
Prapiroon — aptly named after the Thai god of rain — killed 57 and another 16 were missing, the China News Service said, citing preliminary statistics from local governments.
”It’s still raining heavily, and the situation is pretty serious,” an official said from the flood-control headquarters in Guangxi region, where the eye of the storm was located early on Sunday.
In densely populated Guangdong province, so far the most severely affected part of China, the death toll stood at 38, with another 14 missing, according to the news service.
In Guangxi, immediately to the west of Guangdong, 19 were confirmed killed while two were missing, it said.
Tragedy struck in Luming, a hamlet in a mountainous part of Guangxi, when a landslide engulfed the home of a family of four, killing three of them, a local official said.
”Only one man survived,” said Qin Jiexia, a spokesperson of the flood-control official in Heng county, where Luming is located. ”He lost his wife, his daughter and his sister-in-law.”
In Fenghuang township, also part of Guangxi, at least six farmhands died when, early on Saturday, a flood swept away the temporary shelter they had built for the night to stay dry, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Although Prapiroon was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm, it continued to affect the lives of million of people.
In Guangxi’s Heng county, entire communities were paralysed when flooded by water from the Yunbiao reservoir. Large numbers of farm buildings were inundated, forcing residents to flee to the rooftops in hopes of eventually being evacuated, a Xinhua reporter on the scene said.
”The situation has improved a bit, but we’re still flooded,” said Qin, the flood-control office spokesperson.
In Guangxi, one of China’s most impoverished regions, 1,4-million people were affected by rains brought by Prapiroon, and more than 219 000 had to be evacuated, Xinhua said.
Official media have seized on the opportunity to depict the armed forces as servants of the people, as has regularly happened in the past during natural disasters.
State television showed footage of soldiers rescuing mud-caked farmers who had been trapped by floods, or piling up sandbags to prevent rivers from overflowing and destroying surrounding countryside.
Prapiroon was southern China’s sixth typhoon of the storm season, which started more than a month earlier than usual with Typhoon Chanchu. It made landfall on May 18.
The worst was Bilis, which struck on July 14 and hovered over southern China for 10 days, killing at least 612 people, according to earlier state reports.
More than 1 400 people have been killed in China due to typhoons this season, according to the Red Cross, which this week appealed for €3,8-million to help survivors.
Prapiroon formed in the South China Sea and became a typhoon at noon on Wednesday, Xinhua said. — AFP
