11 August 2006Joe McDonald
Typhoon Saomai, the most powerful storm to hit China in five decades, raged ashore yesterday and churned across the south-east of the country, killing at least two people, wrecking houses and capsizing ships after 1.5 million residents were evacuated.
Damage was expected to be widespread in areas that were still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which claimed more than 600 lives last month.
Saomai, with winds of up to 135 mph, hit land in China in the coastal town of Mazhan in Zhejiang province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The area is about 950 miles south of the Chinese capital, Beijing, which was not affected.
The Zhejiang provincial weather bureau said it was the most powerful storm to strike China since the founding of the Communist government in 1949. Saomai, categorised as a "super-typhoon" by Chinese forecasters due to its huge size and high wind speeds, was the eighth major storm of this year's unusually violent typhoon season.
It killed at least two people in the Philippines earlier in the week and dumped rain on Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights.
In China, two people were killed in the southern city of Fuding in Fujian province, which borders Zhejiang to the south.
Eight Taiwanese sailors were missing after two ships capsized in a harbour in Fujian, while four Chinese were missing after their ship struck a reef.
Before the storm hit China, authorities evacuated 990,000 people from flood-prone areas in Zhejiang and 569,000 from parts of Fujian province.
Xinhua said 80 people were injured and more than 1,000 houses were destroyed in and around Mazhan. It said one inch of rain fell in one hour.
China's weather bureau had forecast a summer of powerful typhoons, saying a warm Pacific current would create bigger storms and weather patterns over Tibet would draw them farther inland.
Bilis set off flooding and landslides as far inland as Hunan province, hundreds of miles from the coast. Most of the deaths occurred in areas away from coastal communities which are protected by dyke networks.
Farther south on China's coast, Guangdong province and the Guangxi region were lashed last week by Typhoon Prapiroon, which killed at least 80 people.
Even as Saomai stormed ashore, Chinese forecasters were closely watching Tropical Storm Bopha, which trailed behind it farther out in the Pacific.
