Taipei: The death toll from Typhoon Saola rose on Friday to 42 in the Philippines and Taiwan as the now-tropical storm and Typhoon Damrey made landfall in China.
The Philippines recorded 37 deaths in floods and accidents caused by Saola’s torrential rains and strong winds, the Office of Civil Defence said. Four people were missing and feared dead.
Taiwan residents spent Friday cleaning up storm damage and returning to work, a day after Saola slammed into the island, packing up to 155 kph winds, dumping 1.8 metres of rain and killing five people. Two were missing, the government’s disaster operations centre said.
It weakened into a tropical storm before making landfall Friday morning in Fuding in China’s south-eastern province of Fujian with winds of 90 kph at its centre, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
It was the second tropical cyclone to make landfall in China in little more than nine hours after Damrey hit on Thursday night in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
In Taiwan, Saola caused fallen trees, extensive flooding and landslides. It injured 16.
Among the dead there was Kao Ming-chin, 52, who fell into a sinkhole that opened under his feet while he was strolling on a road next to a swollen river.
In the Philippines, 33 people were injured and 231,384 displaced, including more than 17,000 forced to stay in evacuation centres and the rest with relatives and friends, the Office of Civil Defence said.
The office said 22 of the dead drowned in floods and maritime accidents while 12 were hit by falling trees, two were buried in landslides and one was electrocuted.
Saola, locally called Gener, had battered the northern and central Philippines since Saturday. It blew out of the country on Friday.
The Taiwan government said it evacuated 8,081 residents who lived mostly in mountainous areas inundated by heavy rains and torrents of river water. About 3,280 people are living in public shelters.
The typhoon made landfall twice on Thursday on Taiwan’s less populated east coast. Local meteorologists said the twin landfalls took most of the punch out of the storm, which helped limit the damage to the densely populated western side of the island.
However, local media reports said washed-out roads had isolated 279 residents in three villages in Hualien County and authorities airlifted food and supplies to the villages Friday morning.
“We’re working on opening a road to the villages by the end of the day,” a spokesman for the disaster operations centre said on Friday.