China storm death toll reaches 48
China’s death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon has jumped to 48, with 15 more people missing, after the storm knocked down houses and set off landslides and flash floods, news reports said.
Deaths were reported in Guangdong province, where Prapiroon roared ashore on Thursday, and the neighbouring Guangxi region to the west, the Xinhua News Agency said. It said 46,000 houses were destroyed and damage was estimated at 2.4bn yuan (€233m).
The deaths came despite a massive evacuation ahead of the storm that moved more than 400,000 people out of threatened areas.
Fatalities in Guangxi included six migrant farm workers whose shelter was swept away by a flash flood in the city of Laibin, Xinhua said.
Elsewhere, people were reported buried by landslides, struck by lightning and crushed by collapsed walls. A woman died after being hit by a billboard knocked down by high winds.
In Guangdong, a 25-year-old policeman doing rescue work was killed when he was buried by a mudslide in the city of Sihui, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper said. A front-page photo showed rescue workers in Sihui carrying a woman through churning, waist-deep water.
State television showed soldiers and police carrying children through racing, chest-deep water. Photos on websites showed wrecked buildings, uprooted trees and flooded farmland.
Heavy rain and high winds were forecast through Saturday across the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hainan, China’s southernmost island and a popular tourist destination.
Some of those areas were still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which killed more than 600 people in China, many of them in Hunan.
Crowded Guangdong, the centre of China’s export-driven manufacturing industries, has been especially hard-hit this year during a typhoon season that authorities warned would be worse than usual.
The city of Lechang in Guangdong has suffered 46 deaths since late June, with 65 people still missing, according to the government. More than 30,000 houses in the city have been destroyed.
The website of Guangdong’s provincial government said officials had sent 11 million mobile phone text messages to warn the public of the storm’s arrival - standard procedure over the past year.
Prapiroon killed six people earlier as it passed across the Philippines. One person in Hong Kong was injured Wednesday when high winds toppled empty cargo containers at a shipping terminal.
The typhoon season started early in China this year, where storms have already killed more than 1,460 people, mainly in the densely populated south-east.
Chinese officials estimate more than one million houses have been damaged and millions of acres of farmland and forests destroyed.
Prapiroon, named after the Thai rain god, is the region’s eighth major storm of the season.
Typhoon Kaemi killed at least 35 people in China last week and left dozens missing in flooding and landslides.
