At least 34 people have died and millions of others been affected in the Asia-Pacific region after a typhoon and tropical storm battered China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan.
At least one child was killed as typhoon Morakot pummelled east China on Monday, with winds of up to 120km/h destroying houses and flooding farmlands.
Authorities had evacuated about 500Â 000 people from Fujian province — where Morakot made landfall in late afternoon, bringing waves up to 8m high — and the same number from neighbouring Zhejiang.
Tens of thousands of ships were called back from sea. But disaster relief officials said more than 3,4-million people were affected in Zhejiang alone as hundreds of villages were flooded and more than 1Â 800 houses collapsed.
In one city, Wenzhou, a four-year-old boy died when winds and torrential rain brought down his home.
Morakot claimed the lives of 11 people in the Philippines and another 12 in Taiwan, where 52 people remain missing.
In Japan, 10 people died as an approaching tropical storm triggered floods and landslides in the west of the country.
More than 47Â 000 people in western Japan have been told to leave their homes, NHK television reported. The meteorological office warned that tropical storm Etau could bring ”extremely heavy rain” to many parts of Honshu — Japan’s main island — as the it moves northwards later on Tuesday.
The agency said the storm, which is expected to strike Tokyo on Wednesday, was forecast to produce winds of up to 125km/h, heavy rain and stormy seas.
At least nine people died and eight others were missing in Hyogo prefecture in western Japan. Local reports said a 68-year-old woman was killed in a landslide while a nine-year-old boy was reported missing.
”Cars that were parked on the road got all washed away all the way to the station,” one resident told NHK. Another said: ”Everything toppled over in the house. It’s a complete mess. Even the floor got pushed up by the water.”
Parts of Taiwan saw the worst flooding for half a century. China’s Xinhua state news agency said it had caused 2,2-billion yuan ($318-million) of damage as 143Â 000 hectares of farmland were damaged and nearly 9Â 000 businesses stopped work.
The typhoon dumped 2,5m of rain on the island, causing at least 3,4-billion Taiwan dollars ($102-million) in agricultural damage.
Officials said 110Â 000 houses were left without power and 850Â 000 homes without water.
In Kaohsiung county, a bridge collapse cut off access to a remote village of 1Â 300 residents. Local television reported 200 homes there had been buried in a mudslide.
”It is not clear what the residents’ situation is, but we are sure that Hsiaolin elementary school has been fully destroyed,” Kaohsiung county magistrate, Yang Chiu-hsin, told reporters. – guardian.co.uk