The strongest typhoon to strike China for half a century killed at least 111 people, dozens of them villagers who had taken shelter in a concrete house that collapsed. Nearly 150 others were missing, according to figures released on Friday by the state press and a government agency.
Typhoon Saomai tore into Cangnan county in the eastern province of Zhejiang on Thursday after authorities moved more than one million people in the densely populated commercial province to safety, Xinhua news agency said.
But at least 41 villagers, including eight children, were killed when a house collapsed in the town of Jinxiang, only an hour’s drive from where the typhoon made landfall, Xinhua news agency and a local official said.
Most of the victims, whose bodies were found in the rubble, were neighbours who thought the two-storey, concrete structure would be safer than their own wood-and-brick shelters, Xinhua said, adding that another two died in a separate house collapse in the town.
”The wind was so strong that whole windows were slammed into rooms,” the official in Jinxiang, who declined to give her name, said by telephone. ”Many people here are taking shelter in schools and factories as their houses have been destroyed.”
By Friday morning, Saomai had weakened into a tropical depression as it moved into Jiangxi province, which was bracing for heavy storms along with the neighbouring Anhui province, Xinhua said.
A total of 81 people were killed in the Wenzhou area, which includes Cangnan, and 11 were missing there, the news agency said.
Two people were also killed in Fuding in neighbouring Fujian province, where 620 000 people were evacuated.
‘Windows exploded’
More than 18 000 houses were destroyed and 80 people were injured in the Wenzhou area and the damage was mostly in Cangnan, where many telephone and power lines were severed, causing widespread blackouts, Xinhua said.
Front windows of a service station off the highway near Xiapu were shattered. Most of the roof was ripped off, allowing heavy rains to flood the attached restaurant and shop.
”There were about 100 people inside when at around 9pm the windows just exploded,” said a service-station worker surnamed Wang. ”People were screaming. Then the rain just started pouring in. But we’d pulled the blinds down, so fortunately no one was injured.”
”I was very scared but we get typhoons quite a lot here, though I haven’t see one this strong for a long time,” said a woman called Xiao Lin. Along the main coastal highway to Wenzhou, roofs of many farmhouses had collapsed or simply been blown away.
The highway has now been partially reopened. The weather was overcast and the winds had died down by Friday morning.
The typhoon crossed the coast with winds of 216kph — more powerful than a typhoon that hit Zhejiang in August 1956, triggering a storm surge that killed more than 3 000 people.
Saomai was the eighth storm to hit China this year. Tropical Storm Risk had graded Saomai a category-five ”super” typhoon, but reduced that to category four as it made landfall, the same category as Hurricane Katrina that devastated the United States Gulf coast last year.
The greater Wenzhou area, home to 7,4-million people, declared a state of emergency. Wenzhou authorities said late on Thursday that economic losses to the area — a trading and manufacturing centre — could amount to 2,3-billion yuan ($288-million). — Reuters, AFP