Typhoon Soudelor leaves nearly two dozen dead, 4 missing

World Today

Nearly two dozen people are dead in Taiwan and China as Soudelor continues to push across China with flooding rain.

Typhoon Soudelor left 14 people dead and four missing in east China’s Zhejiang Province as of Monday morning, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters. Now downgraded to Tropical Rainstorm Soudelor, it has been responsible for flooding, mudslides, pounding surf, and high winds from Taiwan to eastern China.


Zhejiang’s Wenzhou city is one of the hardest-hit regions along Souledor’s path. Heavy rain has triggered landslides and road and building collapses, putting people’s lives in danger. Hu Chuqaio filed this report:

Chinese authorities have issued a grade-IV emergency response for the typhoon, the lowest in China’s emergency response system, which requires a 24-hour alert, daily damage reports, and sending money and relief materials within 48 hours.

Soudelor is now moving up China’s east coast with weakened force, but still enough strength to cause extensive damage.
The ministry of civil affairs says Typhoon Soudelor has displaced at least 630,000 people. Close to 3.4 million people have been affected by the storm.

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In Zhejiang, a total of 1.58 million people have been affected by Soudelor.

In Wenzhou city, downpours brought by the typhoon have damaged bridges, flooded streets and inundated buildings.

Heavy rains have also triggered more than 100 landslides in Wenzhou’s Taishun County and cut off road traffic, electricity and water supplies to a dozen villages.

Flooded houses have to be drained and cleaned, roads cleared and toppled electricity poles repaired. CCTV’s Wu Haojun took a look at how the clean-up effort is going:

In Cangnan County, the water level at all reservoirs rose sharply on Sunday. The Qiaoshuidun reservoir in Weixian County saw its water level rise by 11 meters, about five meters above the warning line. Local authorities opened the flood gates at 06:00 on Monday to discharge the water.

Meanwhile, a swollen river overflowed a dam under construction and inundated a tea garden in Songyang County of Lishu city.

Local government has mobilized residents to keep out the floodwater with sandbags.

Rescue work continued on Sunday after the typhoon hit coastal Fujian after its landfall on Saturday night.

Heavy rains brought by the typhoon poured down in Lianjiang County in Fuzhou city, inundating low-lying areas on Sunday.

Water reached people’s waists in the old town area of Fengcheng town and power was cut off.

Firefighters reached trapped residents by speedboats and evacuated more than 100 residents.

Strong winds also blew huge advertisement down in Jinjiang city. While roads in Fuzhou were covered by mud and broken branches. Public transport was severely affected on Sunday in Fuzhou.

In coastal areas, border police rescued two fishermen in Quanzhou city, who were trapped on boat in strong winds when trying to reinforce the anchor for a bigger ship.

A total of 1.21 million people in 53 cities and districts in east China’s Fujian were affected, according to local government information by 14:00 on Sunday.

Story compiled with wires from CCTV News, AccuWeather, and The Associated Press