Reply #15: UPDATE | NYT: Typhoon Pummels China and Taiwan

[Heidi]

A swelling river crept closer to sandbags in a flooded village near Wenzhou, a city of 1.4
million, where officials said the storm had leveled more than 300 homes.

Typhoon Pummels China and Taiwan

Published: August 10, 2009

BEIJING — Rain deluged China’s east coast on Monday hours after Typhoon Morakot slammed into the region south of Shanghai, packing winds up to 111 miles an hour, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing one million people to flee.

In China, a 4-year-old child was reported dead in Wenzhou, a city of nearly 1.4 million in Zhejiang Province, where officials said the storm had leveled nearly 1,500 homes. The child was among five people buried when the winds collapsed five adjacent houses.

By Monday morning, the weakened storm was churning over Wenzhou, where skies had cleared but heavy rain was predicted later. “I’m living in the center of town, which is not so bad,” one Wenzhou woman, Yang Weiwei, said in a telephone interview. “However, some parts of the city are in a mess.”

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Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said the downpours broke records across the island for the most rainfall in 24 hours. The flooding was said to be the worst in a half-century.

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