At least 21 are dead after Typhoon Soudelor slammed into southeastern mainland China and Taiwan, official agencies said.
The storm left 14 people dead in the eastern Chinese cities of Wenzhou and Lishui, where heavy rains triggered mudslides and caused houses to collapse, state news agency Xinhua reported. Across the strait in Taiwan, seven others have been confirmed dead.
The storm reached super typhoon status over the ocean, recording peak winds of 180 miles per hour but weakened to a tropical storm before it made landfall. The West Pacific Basin has seen 10 typhoons so far this year.
CNN iReporter documents conditions, damage in Kaohsiung
Soudelor reached China’s southern Fujian province on Saturday night in the city of Putian. More than 185,000 people had been moved to higher ground, Xinhua said.
Earlier on Saturday, it hit Taiwan, north of the city of Hualien where it killed seven. Five remain missing and 402 have been injured, Taiwan’s National Fire Agency said on Sunday.
Those killed in Taiwan included a mother and her 8-year-old daughter swept out to sea, Central News Agency reported, adding that the girl’s twin sister is missing.
At least 11,800 people had been evacuated from 17 counties and cities in Taiwan since Thursday. Authorities deployed more than 35,000 military personnel to relocate residents in vulnerable areas as the typhoon made its way across the Pacific Ocean.
One city in northern Taiwan saw a wind gust measured at 210 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour) while meteorologists said that the Taipingshan region in the northeast received 40 inches of rain in two days.
Source: CNN
