WALL OF WATER
Soudelor leaves millions without power after causing six deaths in Taiwan
Waves stirred up by strong winds from typhoon Soudelor crash against rocks in Wenling, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, Saturday. Soudelor battered Taiwan, killing six and leaving millions without power. The weakening storm brings rain Sunday to Fujian.
BEIJING— A typhoon that left 10 people dead or missing in Taiwan weakened Sunday as it battered southeast China, collapsing homes and trees and leaving millions without power.
Typhoon Soudelor hit the city of Putian in Fujian province late Saturday night and was downgraded into a tropical storm as it moved across the province.
The Fujian Civil Affairs Department said that it collapsed 36 houses and damaged 281 others. Authorities said they had evacuated more than 370,000 people and ordered around 32,000 boats back to port before the typhoon made landfall.
State broadcasters showed people wading in knee-deep water in the provincial capital of Fuzhou and said the water in some flooded streets was as deep as 80 centimetres.
No casualties were reported, unlike in Taiwan, where the National Fire Agency said six people died, four are missing, and a further 185 were injured. The dead or missing included an 8-year-old girl, her twin sister and their mother who were swept out to sea, a firefighter who was killed and another injured after being hit by a drunken driver as they attempted to move a fallen tree.
The storm downed trees, traffic lights and power lines on the island, causing more than 4 million households to lose electricity. A total of 534 international and domestic flights were cancelled or delayed.
In Fujian, strong winds caused power outages to more than 1.41 million households even before the storm made landfall, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
More than 7,000 soldiers and police were on standby, provincial authorities said.
Flights to Fuzhou and the city of Quanzhou were cancelled, and about 100 trains running through the coastal city of Xiamen suspended services, Xinhua said.
On Friday afternoon, marine police rescued 55 university students and teachers trapped on a small island where they had been attending a summer camp, after strong gales stopped ferry services, Xinhua said.
The centre of the storm made landfall in eastern Taiwan before daybreak Saturday.
By mid-morning, Soudelor was packing maximum sustained winds of 162 km/ h, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said.
The typhoon weakened later Saturday with top winds of up to144 km/h while moving away from the island in a northwesterly direction.