Two killed as super typhoon hits China

TYPHOON Saomai, the most powerful storm to hit China in five decades, raged ashore yesterday and churned across the crowded south-east, killing at least two people, wrecking houses and capsizing ships after 1.5 million residents were evacuated.

Damage was expected to be widespread in areas that were still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which claimed more than 600 lives last month.

Saomai, with winds of up to 135mph, hit land in the coastal town of Mazhan in Zhejiang province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The area is about 1,000 miles south of the capital, Beijing, which wasn’t affected.

The Zhejiang provincial weather bureau said it was the most powerful storm to strike China since the founding of the communist government in 1949.

Saomai, dubbed a “super typhoon” by Chinese forecasters due to its huge size and high wind speeds, was the eighth major storm of this year’s unusually violent typhoon season.

It killed at least two people in the Philippines earlier in the week and dumped rain on Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights.

In China, two people were killed yesterday in the southern city of Fuding in Fujian province, which borders Zhejiang to the south, Xinhua said.

Eight Taiwanese sailors were missing after two ships capsized in a harbour in Fujian, while four Chinese were missing after their ship struck a reef.

Before the storm hit China, authorities evacuated 990,000 people from flood-prone areas in Zhejiang and 569,000 from parts of neighbouring Fujian province, Xinhua said.

China’s weather bureau forecast a summer of powerful typhoons, saying a warm Pacific current would create bigger storms.