Typhoon Soudelor dumped heavy rain and winds in China yesterday, leaving 22 people dead or missing, collapsing homes and trees and cutting power to more than 1 million homes.
Soudelor made landfall in China’s Fujian Province late on Saturday night and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved across the region. Rains from the typhoon triggered mudslides in mountainous Pingyang County in Zhejiang Province, north of Fujian, killing nine people and leaving three others missing, the county government said.
The Fujian Civil Affairs Department said that the storm collapsed 36 houses and damaged 281 others. Authorities had evacuated more than 370,000 people and ordered about 32,000 boats back to port before the typhoon made landfall.
Photo: Reuters
State broadcasters showed people wading in knee-deep water in the provincial capital of Fuzhou and said that some streets were submerged under 80cm of water.
In Fujian, strong winds caused power outages to more than 1.41 million households before the storm made landfall, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Three airports were closed and more than 530 flights canceled, while more than 7,000 soldiers and police were on standby, provincial authorities said.
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