The death toll from Typhoon Saola has risen to 42 in the Philippines and Taiwan, and 300,000 people have been evacuated in China as Typhoon Damrey makes landfall.
The Philippines recorded 37 deaths in floods and accidents caused by Saola’s torrential rains and strong winds, officials said on Friday. Four people were missing and feared dead.
Taiwan residents spent Friday cleaning up storm damage and returning to work, a day after Saola slammed into the island, packing winds of up to 155 kilometres an hour, dumping 1.8 metres of rain and killing five people. Two were reported missing.
Saola weakened into a tropical storm before making landfall on Friday morning in Fuding in China’s south-eastern province of Fujian with winds of 90km/h at its centre, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
It was the second tropical cyclone to make landfall in China in little more than nine hours after Damrey hit on Thursday night in the eastern province of Jiangsu and affected neighbouring Shandong province.
The Fujian provincial government said it had evacuated 306,000 people by Friday morning, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
State radio said workers were rushing to reinforce a breached sea dike in Fujian’s Pingtan area, which put some 5,000 people and 100 boats at risk.
Another 1,900 people were evacuated and tens of thousands of tourists had left Shandong’s Rizhao area, which recorded 174 millimetres of rain brought by Damrey on Friday morning, reports said.
Liuting International Airport in Shandong’s Qingdao city cancelled 29 flights late on Thursday but the airport resumed normal operations on Friday morning.
In the Philippines, 33 people were injured and 231,384 displaced, including more than 17,000 forced to stay in evacuation centres, the Office of Civil Defence said.
A gold mine was closed because of leaking waste.
The office said 22 of the dead drowned in floods and maritime accidents while 12 were hit by falling trees, two were buried in landslides and one was electrocuted.
Saola, locally called Gener, had battered the northern and central Philippines since Saturday. It blew out of the country on Friday.
The Taiwan government said it evacuated 8,081 people from mountainous areas hit by heavy rains and swollen rivers. About 3,280 people were staying in public shelters.
The typhoon made landfall twice on Thursday on Taiwan’s less populated east coast. Local meteorologists said the twin landfalls took most of the punch out of the storm, which helped limit the damage to the more densely populated western side of the island.
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