Rains kill 45, as south braces for typhoon
Print Edition
HEAVY rains and landslides over the past week have killed at least 45 people in southern China and left 21 others missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and an official said yesterday.
Southern China was also bracing for the arrival of Typhoon Rammasun around midday today, bringing torrential rain and wind gusts that are expected to exceed 140 kilometers per hour.
The typhoon has already left at least 40 dead in the Philippines, where it uprooted trees and downed electrical posts on Wednesday.
In Sichuan Province, a landslide caused earth and rocks to hit a truck and four cars on a highway yesterday afternoon, killing 11 people and injuring 19, according to an official in the province’s Maoxian County.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said heavy rains and floods and landslides in the past week killed 34 people and left 21 missing in seven southern provinces.
Most of the dead and missing are in Guizhou and Hunan.
The ministry said nearly 9,300 houses had collapsed in the rains and a further 63,000 had been damaged.
The deluges also affected 384,000 hectares of crops and caused direct economic losses of 5.2 billion yuan (US$840 million), it said.
Meanwhile, Typhoon Rammasun is expected to make landfall in south China’s island province of Hainan or Guangdong Province today, the Hainan provincial meteorological station said yesterday.
Rammasun, packing rainstorms and winds of up to 120km/h, is moving northwest at a speed of 20 to 25km/h and will probably land in Hainan or Guangdong with a maximum wind speed of more than 140km/h around noon, the station forecast.
The National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center issued a red alert for high seas likely to be generated by Rammasun within the next 24 hours in the northern part of South China Sea and along the coast of east Hainan and west Guangdong.
China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
Trains scheduled to run to Hainan today and tomorrow will instead stop at Guangzhou. The island’s high-speed railway, connecting provincial capital Haikou and Sanya City, has been suspended since yesterday.
Ships serving Weizhou Island, a tourism resort of Beihai City, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, were suspended yesterday afternoon because of the typhoon, said local maritime authorities.
And by yesterday morning 26,410 fishing boats around Hainan had been called back to port.
Meanwhile, Lingshui County on the east coast of the island, where the typhoon is likely to make landfall, has ordered all its scenic spots to close for safety reasons.
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