83 Killed as Typhoon Hits East China

The strongest typhoon to strike China in half a century killed at least 83 people Thursday and blew down 1,000 houses, the official New China News Agency reported.

Eighty-one people were killed in the southeastern city of Wenzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, including many found in the debris of collapsed homes, the agency said.

It sent separate reports with fatality tolls totaling 111 but later put the overall number at 83.

Two of the dead were in neighboring Fujian province, where 620,000 people were evacuated, it said.

Authorities evacuated nearly 1 million people before Typhoon Saomai’s 135-mph winds struck Cangnan County, a densely populated commercial region of Zhejiang, the agency said.

In nearby Ningde, winds had eased this morning. Abandoned cars lay in ditches, and the tops of trees had been snapped.

The report said that “transport and communications have been cut.”

The typhoon was more powerful than one that hit Zhejiang in August 1956, triggering a storm surge that killed more than 3,000 people, the agency reported. In 2004, Typhoon Rananim killed more than 100 people in the region.

The typhoon weakened somewhat as it moved inland. It was headed toward Jiangxi province, which was bracing for heavy storms, the China Meteorological Administration said on its website.