Typhoon forces evacuation of 1 million Chinese

[Heidi]

Source: AP

31 minutes ago

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Typhoon Morakot churned toward China forcing the evacuation of nearly 1 million people Sunday, a day after lashing Taiwan with torrential rains that caused the worst flooding on the island in 50 years.

Twenty-nine people were missing in southern Taiwan, the Disaster Relief Center said, and a woman was killed when her vehicle plunged into a ditch in Kaohsiung county in heavy rain Friday.

Morakot was centered 42 miles (70 kilometers) off China's southeastern Fujian province Sunday morning. Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said the storm had winds of up to 67 miles per hour (108 kilometers per hour) and was headed northwest toward China at a speed of 7 mph (11 kph).

About 1 million people were evacuated from China's eastern coastal provinces by early Sunday — more than 470,000 people in Zhejiang and 485,000 others in neighboring Fujian. Authorities in Fujian called 48,000 boats back to harbor.

The meteorological station in eastern Zhejiang issued at typhoon alert and said the storm was likely to make landfall sometime between noon and nighttime, bringing heavy rain to coastal areas.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i6eatUwlDQQIHZiKqXjLHTmQSrogD99V57U80

---

Earlier, related Latest Breaking News thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=4004438">Typhoon Morakot nears Taiwan

[obliviously]

1. Thats like a small town there. nt

[Bluzmann57]

2. Hope all those people are safe and sound

A typhoon doesn't sound pleasant.

[Mind_your_head]

3. Evacuating 1 million people is amazingly impressive....

How did they do it? and where are all of these people staying while they wait for the storm to pass their homes?

Maybe there could be something to be learned here? :shrug:

[beyurslf]

4. That's just what I was thinking. How did they seem to do that easily and

why cant FEMA do it here?

[Mind_your_head]

5. I'm SURE it's 'not easy'.....it is either

A) a propaganda piece (1 million people were not evacuated efficiently/effectively)

OR

B) 1 million people were evacuated efficiently/effectively and the USofA has something (a lot) to learn about how it was done.

Hmmmm, unforunately, I think it's "Option A".

BIG CLUE as to why I'd bet it's Option A: How come there aren't any pictures?

[Posteritatis]

11. Giant evacuations are more common than you'd think

A lot of towns and cities are capable of handling significant chunks of their own evacuations in most countries, and China has a lot of towns and cities. A few thousand people here, ten thousand there, several dozen over there, etc., adds up.

Also keep in mind that just because you haven't encountered a bunch of photos in the first article you read about this doesn't mean they don't exist.

[Mind_your_head]

13. Please cite these examples of "giant evacuations are more common than you think"

:rofl:

[Posteritatis]

17. I read news aside from American edutainment "news." Try it sometime (nt)

[wickerwoman]

18. China does this several times a year every year.

They get three or four big typhoons a year in Fujian and Zhejiang and regularly evacuate millions of people. The one major benefit of central planning. And yes, they actually evacuate them out of the cities and into bomb shelters in the mountains left over from fighting the Japanese in WW2. I used to live there and saw them do it.

Here's an almost identical story from 2007:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/08/18/china-typhoon.html

Another 2007 Typhoon (Wipha):

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/09/19/typhoon-china.html

2.7 million were evacuated before Typhoon Wipha. There was an optional evacuation order in Shanghai which I ignored. It was scary as shit because they were predicting the typhoon could swamp the neighborhood where I lived but fortunately it just missed the city.

2006: 180,000 evacuated for Typhoon Chanchu

2006: 1.6 million evacuated for Typhoon Saomai

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4778631.stm

[Thothmes]

12. The PRC does not have a posse comitatus

law. I suspect several divisions of the PLA was used in the evacuation effort. The Chinese Government often uses the PLA for all types of emergency responses.

[Heidi]

6. UPDATE | Photos from China and elsewhere

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/09/content_11849894.htm">xinhuanet



People's Daily Online



Straits Times


BBC

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. That flooding in Taiwan: more than 80 inches of rain!

I can't conceive of getting that much in a day or two. It's about 3 times the amount of rain I get here in an entire year, and this is Britain!

[demoleft]

8. One million in China flee typhoon

Source: bbc

Typhoon Morakot has made landfall on China's south-eastern coast, where the authorities have evacuated almost one million people.

The storm crashed ashore on Xiapu, in the eastern province of Fujian, with winds of up to 119km/h (74mph).

Some 473,000 residents of Zhejiang province have been evacuated, as well as 480,000 from Fujian, China's state news agency Xinhua reports.

It said a child was killed when houses collapsed in Wenzhou city in Zhejiang.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8191951.stm

[Wizard777]

9. Ah where is Zeus when you really need him?

[proteus_lives]

14. I think this actually falls into Poseidon's territory.

[Wizard777]

16. No this is clearly Typhon's territory. It was Zeus who defeated the Titan Typhon.

It's not Poseidon's territory because a typhoon involves the wind more than the sea. The ancient Greeks would probably see this as a clash between Typhon (wind) and Poseidon (water). But Typhoon takes it's name from the Titan Typhon. Trust me on this. Mythos is definitely the territory of a Wizard.

[fasttense]

10. They should have just used their cars and evacuated instead of waiting for their government

to help them. Is Communist China a Nanny state? :sarcasm:

[Heidi]

15. UPDATE | NYT: Typhoon Pummels China and Taiwan

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.”

<snip>

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.

Read more

[Heidi]

19. UPDATE | BBC: China landslide crushes buildings

Page last updated at 03:41 GMT, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 04:41 UK

At least six apartment blocks have collapsed following landslides in eastern China, trapping an unknown number of people, state media reports.

Officials say they have managed to pull six people alive from the rubble in the town of Pengxi in Zhejiang province.

The landslides were triggered by heavy rains caused by Typhoon Morakot, which has swept across parts of East Asia.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, hundreds of people are feared dead after a mudslide caused by the typhoon buried a small village.

Read more