Southern China braces for deadly typhoon

AP – A boat sails past docked ships at a port in Haikou, in south China's Hainan province, Wednesday, Oct. …

• Slideshow:Typhoon Megi
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By MIN LEE, Associated Press Writer – Wed Oct 20, 12:07 pm ET

HONG KONG – Residents stockpiled food and ships were ordered to dock Wednesday as southern China braced for a typhoon that has already lashed the northern Philippines amid floods that have killed more than 70 people across Asia.

Typhoon Megi packed winds of 140 miles per hour (225 kilometers per hour) when it struck the Philippines on Monday. Philippine officials reported 20 deaths, including several people who drowned after being pinned by fallen trees. The storm damaged thousands of homes and flooded vast areas of rice and corn fields.

Late Wednesday, Megi was about 350 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of the southern financial hub of Hong Kong and expected to eventually hit the southern Chinese coast, the Hong Kong Observatorysaid on its website.

The storm's winds have weakened to 110 mph (175 kph), but are expected to build strength over the next two days before losing steam again Saturday, when the typhoon is projected to make landfall in China's Guangdong province, the observatory said.

In Guangdong, officials have ordered all fishing boats back to shore, put the provincial flood control headquarters on alert and warned that reservoirs should be watched, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. In the southern island province of Hainan, residents rushed to supermarkets to stock up on food, vegetables and bottled water, Xinhua said.

In Hong Kong, the mood was calmer in the densely populated city of 7 million whose infrastructure has traditionally held up well against the annual summer barrage of typhoons. Still, the Hong Kong Observatory urged residents to make sure their windows could be properly bolted, avoid the coastline and refrain from water sports. It also ordered small vessels to return to shore.

In the Philippines, more than 215,000 people were affected by the typhoon, including 10,300 people who fled to evacuation centers, officials said. About $30 million (1.3 billion pesos) worth of infrastructure and crops were damaged and nearly 5,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by Megi's ferocious wind, according to the government's main disaster-response agency.

Click image to see photos of Typhoon Megi

AP/Bullit Marquez

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, where recent flooding from a different weather system has killed at least 45 people over the past week, soldiers and police found a bus that was carrying dozens of people when it was washed away by flood waters, disaster officials said Wednesday. It was located on a river bed, a half a mile (one kilometer) downstream from where it was yanked off the road. Twenty people who failed to escape the bus before it was inundated are missing, presumed dead.

Up to 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) of rain pounded the region in the past week, submerging more than 220,000 houses and forcing more than 173,000 people to flee their homes, according to the national flood and storm control committee.

In Thailand, floods have killed nine people since the weekend. Runoff of those waters were due to sweep down the Chao Phraya river into the capital, Bangkok, late Wednesday.

Bangkok Deputy Gov. Porntep Techaipaibul said that officials have prepared more than 4 million sandbags amid fears of serious floods in parts of the city, particularly during high tides next week.

Authorities say the flooding has affected nearly 4,000 villages in 19 eastern, central and northeastern provinces. More heavy rains — the tail end of the annual monsoon — are forecast, including in some central provinces.

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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila, Chi-chi Zhang in Beijing, Tran Van Minh in Hanoi and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101020/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_typhoon

Thousands evacuated as typhoon hits southern China

Reuters – Residents stand on a partially destroyed wharf near a capsized ship after Typhoon Conson hit Mariveles, …

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By CHI-CHI ZHANG, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 41 mins ago

BEIJING – A typhoon that left a trail of destruction and deaths in the Philippines hit southern China late Friday as emergency workers prepared for torrential rains and lashing winds, flights and ferries were canceled and tens of thousands of residents were evacuated.

Typhoon Conson had weakened to a tropical storm after blowing out of the Philippines, where 39 people were dead and the number of missing climbed to 84. But it restrengthened to a typhoon with winds of up to 78 miles per hour (126 kilometers per hour) and hit the city of Sanya on Hainan island at 7:50 p.m. local time Friday, China's National Meteorological Center said.

The center's website provided no other details. Xinhua News Agency reported one death from the storm later Friday: a motorcyclist who was struck by a falling billboard.

Heavy rain fell on Hainan as the typhoon approached and conditions were dark and windy, said a receptionist who answered the phone at the Mandarin Oriental in the city of Sanya.

"If the wind starts to pick up, it may uproot some of the smaller trees. We are recommending to guests that they stay indoors," said the woman, who would not give her name.

Authorities dispatched relief workers in preparation for the storm and ordered thousands of boats to dock. More than 150 passengers were stranded at a port after ferry services were suspended, Xinhua said. Twenty-eight flights were also canceled.

"Even though typhoons are common in our region, we are still taking precautionary safety measures," said an official at the provincial meteorological bureau who refused to give her name as is common among Chinese bureaucrats.

In addition to Hainan, parts of Guangdong province and neighboring Guangxi region will see torrential rains over the next 24 hours as Conson moves toward the northwest at 9 to 13 mph (15 to 20 kph).

Nearly 40,000 people in Hainan and more than 20,000 people in Guangdong were evacuated from areas in the projected path of the typhoon, Xinhua said.

The storm should continue its northwest path inland over the weekend, heading toward southwest China and northern Vietnam.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung urged authorities in 23 northern and central provinces on Friday to ban ships and fishing trawlers from sailing. He also ordered local governments to evacuate people from high-risk areas and to advise others to stockpile food and medicine.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, in a nationally televised emergency meeting, scolded the weatherbureau for failing to predict that Conson would hit Manila, which left government agencies unprepared for the onslaught.

At least 39 people died in the Philippines, including 14 fishermen whose bodies were recovered by the navy, coast guard and policemen in Bataan province, west of Manila, on Thursday. Nine died when a wayward oil barge slammed into their boats, which were moored near Mariveles town, the coast guard said.

Five others were found at sea off Bataan, where their boats sank.

The number of missing soared as emergency crews restored electricity and fixed communication problems between Manila and nearby provinces on Luzon island, the national disaster agency said.

Many parts of China have been pounded by storms this summer, though areas expected to be hit by Conson had not been seriously affected so far. Flooding and subsequent landslides in communities along the Yangtze River and other scattered parts of China have killed 135 people so far this month, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. Direct economic losses in July reached 26 billion yuan ($3.8 billion).

Conson was not expected to hit the areas in China already battered by weeks of flooding.

In Japan, police said landslides caused by heavy rains killed two people in Hiroshima while another was swept away in a swollen river. Eight people were missing across western and central Japan.

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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez in Manila, Jay Alabaster in Tokyo and Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100716/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_typhoon

Floodwaters receding in hard-hit southern China

AP – In this photo taken Tuesday, June 22, 2010, a child and woman are evacuated on large styrofoam boxes …

• Slideshow:China devastated by heavy rain, landslides
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Sun Jun 27, 2:58 am ET

BEIJING – Floodwaters receded in hard-hit southern China on Sunday and workers nearly finished repairing a dike breach that forced the evacuation of 100,000 people.

Torrential rains pummeled a wide swath of China's south and more than 3 million people had to be evacuated from their homes over the past two weeks, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

China sustains major flooding annually along the mighty Yangtze and other major waterways, but this year's floods have been especially devastating, killing 235 people while 109 remain missing, the ministry said.

Floods have also caused 53 billion yuan ($7.8 billion) in directeconomic losses, it said.

Water had receded enough that some people returned to inspect their homes over the weekend, China Central Television said. Residents returned to find their mud-brick houses covered in sludge in areas that had been under 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) of water after a reservoir overflowed in Malong county of Yunnan province.

Workers using dump trucks and earth movers were repairing a breach in the dike on the Fu River in Jiangxi province, according to CCTV footage. There was still 220 feet (66 meters) left to fill, and authorities expected to complete the repair by Monday.

Efforts also focused on other provinces with crews cleaning debris from mudslides off highways and railway tracks, CCTV said. Local authorities were ordered to step up patrols to inspect for damage.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100627/ap_on_re_as/as_china_flooding