A Million in China Evacuate Ahead of Typhoon

BEIJING — Saying they were taking no chances, Chinese officials evacuated a million coastal residents on Sunday as a weakened Typhoon Morakot swept onto the mainlan2d south of Shanghai after battering Taiwan the day before.

Reuters
Rescuers aided a man stranded by flooding as Typhoon Morakot approached Shanghai on Sunday.

A 4-year-old child was reported dead after the storm hit Wenzhou, a manufacturing city in Zhejiang province on the east coast, on Sunday afternoon. The child was among five people buried when the winds collapsed five adjacent houses in the city of nearly 1.4 million.

Wenzhou officials said the storm had destroyed more than 300 homes. Authorities said that the storm was whipping up waves as high as 26 feet in the east China Sea and in the strait between Taiwan and mainland China.

As it hit the Chinese mainland, the typhoon carried winds of up to 111 miles per hour, China’s state-run Xinhua news service said, but meteorologists reported later that it had degraded close to tropical storm status, with 74 miles per hour winds.

The typhoon, the eighth of the season, came ashore at 4:20 p.m. China time at Xiapu County, in north Fujian Province. Xinhua said that more than 490,000 people had been moved to safety in Fujian, and 48,000 boats summoned back to harbor.

In Zhejiang Province, between Fujian and Shanghai, another 505,000 people were evacuated and 35,000 boats called in.

Both provinces are manufacturing centers with large populations living in oceanside port cities. Just north of the typhoon’s landfall, Shanghai was spared the worst winds but nevertheless canceled airline flights and lowered river reservoirs to prepare for flooding.

Xinhua said that relief teams were distributing food and water to rural villagers who had been stranded by high waters.

Earlier, Taiwan’s Disaster Relief Center told The Associated Press that three people were killed and 31 were missing and feared dead after the storm swamped the island throughout Saturday with high winds and torrential rains in some areas. Sixteen of the missing were from one family that had lived in a makeshift house in Kaohsiung, in the island’s south, that was swept away by the waters.

In southeastern Taiwain’s Taitung County, a six-story hotel collapsed into a neighboring river after torrential rains eroded its foundation, but officials said all 300 guests had been safely evacuated.

The Hotel Chin Shuai lay collapsed in floodwater during typhoon Morakot in Chihpen, southeastern Taiwan, on Sunday.

Authorities said the Taiwan flooding was the worst in a half-century. More than 170,000 persons remained without power on Monday, the government said.

Morakot, which means emerald in Thai, had struck the Philippines earlier, killing 21, including one French and two Belgian tourist, according to the National Disaster Coordinating Council there. Seven others were reported missing.

The government reported that more than 83,000 Philippines residents were affected by floodwaters and landslides, and 22,000 had been evacuated.

In the South China Sea, Xinhua reported that three fishermen were dead and at least 26 mariners were reported missing in the wake of tropical storm Goni, which had struck China’s southern Guangdong Province on Tuesday and left Hainan Province on Sunday

By MICHAEL WINES