Twelve people were killed and five others missing as Super Typhoon Soudelor left behind a trail of destruction in eastern China, uprooting trees, hitting power supply and causing the heaviest rains in a century, state media reported today.
Heavy downpours have caused mudslides and cave-ins led to several house collapses, affecting over 2 lakh people after Soudelor, called the biggest typhoon of the year earlier in the week with winds of up to 230 kilometres an hour, made a landfall in the Chinese coast last night.
The 12 dead and five missing people may have been washed away by floods or buried under the collapsed houses in Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing local flood control and drought relief officials.
After pounding Taiwan where it claimed six lives and injured 102 people, Soudelor made a landfall in Fujian Province and moved from there to neighbouring Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces, and has weakened.
In Wencheng county, under the jurisdiction of Wenzhou, precipitation within 24 hours hit 645 mm, the heaviest in a hundred years, officials said.
About 1.36 million people in the city were affected by the typhoon, with a direct economic loss of 3.83 billion yuan (USD 617 million U.S. Dollars).
Zhejiang Province issued an orange alert for rainstorms earlier today.
So far precipitation in 16 cities and counties reached 250 mm. The city of Fuding experienced the heaviest downpour of over 501 mm. In the provincial capital of Fuzhou, much of the downtown area was waterlogged.
More than 10,000 trees had fallen and traffic stalled on flooded streets.
A total of 1,63,200 people were evacuated last night, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief office.
Power supply to over three million households was affected, and was restored for 1.14 million households this morning after urgent repairs.
Three airports in the province were also closed, with more than 530 flights cancelled. Six expressways were closed and 191 high-speed trains were also cancelled.
As the typhoon moved to east China's Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, the Fujian flood control and drought relief office downgraded the level-three typhoon emergency response to level-two.
Anhui and Jiangsu provinces have launched a level-three emergency response for the typhoon and rainstorms, following nearby Jiangxi Province.
