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100,000 evacuated as typhoon hits China coast
A powerful typhoon ploughed into a densely populated area of south China on Wednesday, killing three people and triggering a "once-in-a-century storm tide" in several cities, state media said.
- Agencies
- Published: 23:39 September 24, 2008
Hong Kong: A powerful typhoon ploughed into a densely populated area of south China on Wednesday, killing three people and triggering a "once-in-a-century storm tide" in several cities, state media said.
Authorities evacuated more than 100,000 people before typhoon Hagupit made landfall in far south China around dawn.
But three still lost their lives in the crowded, heavily commercial province of Guangdong, with another two missing, reported the website of the official People's Daily. It did not say how they died.
"There have been no reports of major hazards or mass death or injury," the report added. Chinese authorities also helped 225 fishermen back into shore, it said.
Streets were deserted and shops and businesses shuttered as the storm uprooted trees and brought down billboards in cities across Guangdong, including Maoming where the centre of the storm made landfall.
The state news agency Xinhua described typhoon Hagupit as "the worst to hit Guangdong in more than a decade", but it was not clear by what gauge it was measuring the storm considering typhoons in the past have triggered heavy death tolls.
High winds destroyed a petrol station along the Zhanjiang section of State Highway 325 and a factory under construction.
Hagupit triggered a once-in-a-century storm tide - a high flood period in which water levels can rise to more than 5 metres above the normal tide - in several coastal cities including Foshan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen and Yangjiang.
Hagupit death toll
Death toll from Typhoon Hagupit rose to 9 and could increase to 27 with 14 gold miners trapped in a flooded northern Luzon tunnel, a senior official told Gulf News.
The typhoon has displaced 112,873 people or about 28,565 families in 375 villages in 41 municipalities in eight provinces, said an official. In northern Luzon's three regions - the hardest hit - about 108,218 people or 27,601 families were displaced.
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