Rescuers in eastern China yesterday searched for survivors after a tornado and hailstorm killed at least 98 people as it swept over a city’s outskirts, destroying buildings, smashing trees and flipping vehicles onto their roofs.
The tornado hit a densely populated area of farms and factories on Thursday near the city of Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, about 800km south of Beijing.
Jiangsu Governor Shi Taifeng yesterday said that the death toll had risen to 98 people, with 800 others injured, according to the official China News Service.
Photo: Reuters
Earlier, the state-run Xinhua news agency said 200 people were critically injured.
Rescuers worked to carry injured villagers into ambulances and deliver food and water to others, Xinhua reported yesterday, although state broadcaster CCTV said that roads were blocked with trees, downed power lines and other debris.
Heavy rain and the possibility of further hailstorms and more tornadoes complicated rescue efforts.
Photo: AFP
In badly hit Xintu village, survivors grieved over lost relatives and surveyed the damage wrought on their homes.
“The people inside tried to run outside, but the wind was too strong so they couldn’t,” villager Wang Shuqing told a reporter. “My family members were all inside, they all died. The police then came and took the bodies out, I can’t bear it.”
The disaster has been declared a national-level emergency, and on a trip to Uzbekistan, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) ordered Chinese government bodies to provide all necessary assistance.
Tents and other emergency supplies were being sent from Beijing, while schools and other facilities were used to shelter survivors, CCTV said.
The network showed people carrying the injured to hospitals, cars and trucks lying upside down, street light poles snapped in half, and steel electricity pylons crumpled and lying on their side. Power and telephone communications were knocked out over a broad area.
“I heard the gales and ran upstairs to shut the windows,” Xinhua quoted Xie Litian, 62, as saying. “I had hardly reached the top of the stairs when I heard a boom and saw the entire wall with the windows on it torn away.”
The roof then collapsed as he raced downstairs, Xie said.
After sheltering in a corner for 20 minutes, he emerged to find the neighborhood transformed into a wasteland.
“It was like the end of the world,” he said.
Jiangsu is a coastal province north of Shanghai. Yancheng is a city of more than 8 million people.
The Jiangsu provincial fire and rescue service said on its microblog that the storm was accompanied by hail.
Crews were dispatched to evacuate workers and secure chemicals and other potentially dangerous items at a sprawling solar panel factory in a Yancheng suburb, it said.
No chemical leaks have been reported, CCTV said.
Photographs showed a wrecked three-story school with large trees strewn on its playing field. Its windows had been blown out and its roof and upper floor torn off, along with those of numerous other buildings.
Bodies were shown lying in the open or buried in rubble. At least one hog farm was hit, its livestock covered in bricks and roofing material.
The reports said the tornado struck at about 2:30pm and hit Funing and Sheyang counties on the city’s outskirts the hardest, with winds of up to 125kph.
Tornados occasionally strike southern China during the summer, but rarely with the scale of death and damage caused by the one on Thursday.
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