The death toll from Typhoon Rananim climbed to 164 yesterday,
with 24 people still missing, according to officials in east
China's Zhejiang Province.
A rescue operation searching for 21 people buried by wreckage
caused by the mudslide on Friday in Leqing, Zhejiang Province was
underway, said Feng Zhili, vice-mayor of Wenzhou, one of worst-hit
cities in the province.
"The tragedy happened after the terrible Typhoon has really
worsened the great damage," said Feng, adding that telephone lines
to Leqing were still down four days after the city was hit by an
avalanche of mud and rock.
The latest figures from the provincial flood control and drought
relief headquarters said 12.99 million people have been affected
and the mudslide had caused 18.128 billion yuan (US$2.18 billion)
worth of damage.
Provincial officials said 109 people had been killed when their
houses collapsed, with a further 28 losing their lives in the
subsequent landslides, flash floods and rockfalls, with nine being
killed by winds.
About 20 migrant workers are on the casualty list, with 144
victims being local people.
Typhoon Rananim, which swept through the whole of Zhejiang
Province on Thursday night, was the biggest typhoon to hit the
country since 1956, according to the China Meteorological
Administration.
It struck Wenling, a coastal city in Zhejiang Province, at 8 pm
last Thursday night.
It then ripped through south of Taizhou and Wenzhou, the west of
Jinhua and Quzhou and finally hurtled into Jiangxi Province at 11
am on August 13, according to the local meteorological
observatory.
The typhoon remained in the province for 15 hours with a maximum
force of over 12.
"Despite the damage, the great efforts we have put to fight
typhoon such as evacuating people beforehand, have indeed cut
losses to the minimum," said Yu Zhongda, deputy secretary of the
provincial Party committee.
According to incomplete statistics provided by the provincial
authorities, about 467,900 residents had been evacuated to safer
areas and 9,900 ships had been pulled into harbours.
A 1,340-kilometre-long standard dyke, thousands of reservoirs,
and water locks have greatly reduced the losses, said Yu.
Reconstruction work has begun across the whole province and the
government is determined to help homeless people move into new
houses before the winter, Yu added.
"We will pay special attention to the quality of buildings to
better withstand typhoons while we are building new houses," Yu
says.
According to a survey conducted by the provincial construction
bureau, 85 per cent of the destroyed homes were built before or
during the 1980s, while 10 per cent were built in the 1990s.
The majority of people evacuated were living in houses built
during or before the 1980s.
With maximum winds with a force of 9, the 16th tropical winds
this year were predicted to reach the southern parts of Zhejiang
Province last night, according to the local meteorological
observatory.
In another development, alarmed by the mudslide that happened in
Leqing, officials from Ningbo in Zhejiang Province plan to move
residents from 25 villages to safe places amid the threat of
disaster.
(China Daily August 18, 2004)