At least three people were killed and 150 injured, including six seriously, in an unexpected tornado in Xiaoxian County, east China's Anhui Province, early Tuesday.
According to local reports, beginning at 2:24 AM on Tuesday, a tornado swept through the northern Anhui county. Accompanied by lightning, thunder and hail, the whirlwind--rarely seen in China--wreaked havoc on the rural county for about 30 minutes.
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The tornado uprooted an estimated 460,000 trees, toppled 18,000 houses and destroyed 16,667 hectares of crops. It injured 1,000 head of large livestock and 30,000 domestic fowl.
Power transmission and telecommunication lines were downed, causing an eight-hour countywide blackout, according to the Civil Affairs Bureau of Xiaoxian County.
The office for disaster relief in neighboring Dangshan County reported gale-force winds and hail from 11:00 PM Monday through 1:00 AM Tuesday. No deaths or injuries were reported.
Estimates put direct economic losses in the area at 73.8 million yuan (US$8.9 million).
In Guangdong Province, lightning strikes claimed five lives and injured four others according to the Nanfang Daily.
"Lightning storms are expected to continue for the next few days in Guangdong in the wake of Typhoon Mindulle," local weather officials said. They warned people not to seek shelter from rain under isolated trees in open areas.
Guangdong sees thunderstorms 80 days out of the year on average. Last year, 48 people were killed and 39 injured in 57 reported lightning strikes.
In the neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, eight people have been killed and four others injured by mountain floods in the past two days, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.
In the western region of the country, at least 13 people have been killed and 34 are missing in a mudslide brought by floods in two counties of Yunnan Province.
In mudslides caused by heavy rains and consequent flooding on local rivers running through the two counties, at least six people were seriously injured and 360 more stranded. Some 2,100 houses toppled and over 1,000 head of cattle were killed.
At least one person was still missing in Longchuan County, where more than 2,000 hectares of crops were buried, 3,000 houses collapsed and more than 26,000 residents made homeless by the disaster.
On Saturday, two road workers were buried and killed when a mudslide hit their worksite in Linzhi Prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2004)
