The number of those who lost their lives in typhoon Prapiroon
has risen to 80 in China with nine people still missing, said the
National Natural Disaster Reduction Committee on Monday.
The tropical storm forced 844,000 people in southern China's Guangdong and Hainan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to evacuate,
the committee explained.
Prapiroon made landfall between Yangxi County and Dianbai County
in Guangdong at 7:20 PM last Thursday bringing with it torrential
rains. It weakened to become a tropical storm after moving into
neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Friday.
Fifty-four people in Guangdong and 26 in Guangxi were killed.
Seven people are missing in Guangdong and two in Guangxi.
The storm affected more than 10 million people in the area and
caused direct economic losses of 7.23 billion yuan (US$900
million). Nearly 30,000 houses were destroyed and 140,000 others
damaged, said the committee.
Over 20,000 vessels returned safely to harbor in the southern
island province of Hainan before the typhoon arrived.
Prapiroon, which means Rain God in Thai, formed in the South
China Sea and was declared a typhoon last Wednesday. The fourth
typhoon, Bilis, in mid-July claimed the lives of at least 612
people and the fifth, Kaemi, later the same month killed an
estimated 35 people.?
Prapiroon passed through Guangxi on Sunday morning after
bringing severe weather to the region for 60 hours. It moved
westward to southwest China's Yunnan Province and Vietnam but continued to
weaken, according to the regional meteorological observatory in
Guangxi.
Reconstruction work is already underway in the Prapiroon-hit
areas.
In Guangdong, a province hard hit by typhoons this year, the
provincial taxation department announced on Monday eight
preferential policies including the reduction or exemption from
income taxes to support reconstruction in disaster-hit areas.
In Guangxi eight teams of health workers have been dispatched to
Prapiroon-hit areas to instruct people on sanitation which will
help in avoiding epidemics, according to the regional disease
prevention and control center.
Air traffic and water supplies returned to normal in Hainan by
Saturday.
According to China's Central Meteorological Observatory new
typhoons are expected to affect coastal areas in southeastern
China. Zhejiang Provincial Observatory Station yesterday issued an
emergency gale alert, saying that Bopha, one of three tropical
storms forming in the western Pacific, was gaining strength.
Relevant departments in this region should pay close attention
to the future route of the storm, the station warned.
Bopha, the ninth tropical storm this year, is expected to make
landfall in northern Taiwan tonight or tomorrow morning as a
relatively weak 'category one' typhoon, reports said.
Tropical storm Saomai was also moving towards Taiwan from the
southeast with a maximum sustained wind speed of 119 kilometers per
hour and gusts of up to 155 kph, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau
said yesterday on its website.
And the ministry has dispatched a work panel to Panjin in
northeast China's Liaoning Province where heavy rain has led to
severe flooding, according to a news release yesterday.
From July 29 to August 6, heavy flooding has affected 1.26
million people, forced the relocation of 115,000 and destroyed
110,000 homes in eight cities including Shenyang, Dalian, Panjin
and Dandong, the release added.
The ministry also allocated 1,500 tents to the disaster-hit
region. A total of 15 million yuan (US$1.9 million) of disaster
relief funds have been arranged by local governments to relocate
and help the victims.
Medium to heavy rains are forecast in southern Yunnan Province
after Prapiroon is downgraded from tropical storm to low-pressure
cell, the Central Meteorological Office said yesterday.
Thunderstorms, hailstones and gales are forecast in a large area
ranging from northeast and north China to regions between the
Yangtze and Huaihe rivers over the next two days, the office
warned.?
(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily August 8, 2006)