Typhoon Saomai : image courtesy NOAA (click to enlarge)
Environment News
China is Hit by Typhoon Saomai - Strongest in Fifty Years
Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 11 August, 2006 : - - The most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades slammed into its southeastern coast Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes and battering the region with rain and wind after more than 1.3 million people were evacuated, state media reported. At least two people were killed.
Typhoon Saomai was the eighth major storm to strike China int his summer's unusually violent typhoon season. Torrential rains were forecast following landfall as it churned inland across crowded areas where Tropical Storm Bilis killed more than 600 people last month.
Saomai, with winds up to 135 mph, made landfall at the town of Mazhan in coastal Zhejiang province at 5:25 p.m., the Xinhua News Agency said, citing weather officials. Xinhua said two people were killed in the city of Fuding, while 80 people were injured and more than 1,000 houses toppled in and around Mazhan.
Saomai was the most powerful typhoon to hit China since the founding of the communist government in 1949, Xinhua said, citing the Zhejiang provincial weather bureau. Before its arrival, at least 760,000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas of Zhejiang and 569,000 from the neighboring coastal province of Fujian, Xinhua said. It said a total of 70,000 ships had returned to port in the two provinces.
The area is about 950 miles south of Beijing, the Chinese capital, which was not affected by the storm. In the central and southern Philippines, two people died and seven others were reported missing after giant waves and heavy rains generated by the typhoon battered coastal villages this week, officials said.
More than 200 houses built on stilts were destroyed as waves up to 10 feet tall ravaged the coast of Bongao, the capital of southern Tawi-Tawi province, before dawn Wednesday, provincial Gov. Sadikul Sahali said. A child died and another was reported missing, he said.
"There is floating debris everywhere," Sahali said. Elsewhere, a man was killed as big waves washed away about 200 shanties in seaside villages in Talisay city on central Cebu island early Wednesday, the civil defense office said.
Saomai passed across the Japan's Okinawa island group on Wednesday with winds up to 89 mph, prompting airlines to cancel 141 flights and affecting 24,000 passengers. China's weather bureau had forecast unusually heavy typhoon action this summer, saying warmer than normal Pacific currents and weather patterns over Tibet would create bigger storms and draw them farther inland.
Bilis triggered flooding and landslides as far inland as Hunan province, hundreds of miles from the coast. Most of the deaths happened in areas away from coastal communities that have elaborate dike networks and a long history of vacuating flood-prone areas. Typhoon Prapiroon lashed China's southern coast last week, killing at least 80 people in floods and landslides in Guangdong province and neighboring Guangxi.
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