BEIJING, Aug 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The death toll from Typhoon Lekima rose
to 28 in eastern China, said local authorities on Sunday, as rescue teams
worked to locate the missing after the storm triggered a landslide and forced
more than a million people to evacuate.
The monster storm arrived in Wenling city in the early hours of Saturday,
packing winds of 187 kilometres per hour (116 miles per hour), with waves
several metres high hitting the coastline.
On Saturday, national television station CCTV said that 18 people had died
in a landslide triggered by the storm’s downpours in the municipality of
Wenzhou, around 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Shanghai.
It was unclear if the further 10 deaths announced Sunday resulted from the
same incident.
Twenty people were still missing, according to Zhejiang provincial
authorities.
“Currently, search and rescue work from various regions is still ongoing,”
they said on social media platform Weibo.
More than a million people were evacuated from their homes ahead of the
typhoon, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Some 110,000 people were
housed in shelters.
In Zhejiang province alone, nearly 300 flights were cancelled, and ferry
and rail services were suspended as a precaution.
On Sunday, footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed rescue workers on
boats navigating through Linhai city, where streets were completely submerged
in muddy water.
Local Chinese media reports also showed teams pulling stranded citizens
from bright orange inflatable boats, with skies starting to clear as the
storm moved further up the coast.
Lekima has entered Jiangsu province north of Shanghai and is expected to
hit Shandong province later on Sunday, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Both
provinces have already issued a red alert for torrential rain.