Storm kills 78 people in China
500 injured, entire villages destroyed
HURRICANE-force winds, freak hailstorms, pounding rain and a tornado killed 78 people in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu yesterday and injured nearly 500 others, 200 of them critically, Xinhua reported.
The storms had hit Yancheng city early in the afternoon, with witnesses saying whole villages had been levelled and huge trees felled, China’s official news agency said.
Winds of up to 125km/h struck the city and outlying suburbs, destroying houses.
“I heard the gales and ran upstairs to shut the windows,” Xie Litian, 62, from Donggou township in Funing County, told Xinhua.
“I had hardly reached the top of the stairs when I heard a boom and saw the entire wall with the windows on it torn away,” she said.
All the other houses in her neighbourhood had been destroyed, she said.
“It was like the end of the world.”
Photos of the scene show dazed residents near homes reduced to rubble amid tangled telephone wires, splintered wood and toppled poles.
Many parts of China have been lashed by torrential rains this week as summer rainstorms have been heavier than usual, causing damage across the country.
Flooding is common during the summer monsoon season in the south of China, but rainfall has been particularly heavy this year. In central China, heavy floods had killed 22 people and displaced 197 000, state media said on Monday.
Eight people had been trapped in a flooded coal mine in southwest China’s Guizhou province, Xinhua reported.
China’s vice-premier Wang Yang said days earlier that China was facing volatile weather conditions due to the influence of El Nino.