Huge waves beat against the sea shore as Typhoon Lekima approaches Shitang in the southeast of Zhejiang province. Photo: Xinhua
AUGUST 12th 2019
Death Tolls Rise as China’s Typhoon Lekima Leaves Trail of Carnage
The typhoon in Lekima; Eastern China, has been raging for several days now and had been expected to calm down after it’d subsided from its label of “super typhoon”, but the death toll had recently risen to 44 people on Monday morning, according to official data. The storm, as it travelled, reportedly continued up the coast, disrupting transport and causing billions of dollars in economic losses.
According to data from provincial emergency bureaus and state media, 12 people were recorded dead recently in addition to the previously recorded victims the storm, a number which includes seven victims from the Zhejiang province, as well as five from Shandong, with the death toll expected to rise yet since the revelation that 16 people are still missing.
On Sunday, the death toll had been put at a ‘32’ by state broadcaster CCTV, as the storm refused to cease its trail of carnage. It was early on Saturday when Typhoon Lekima made landfall over in China’s Zhejiang province, with winds speeds dangerously high, reaching up to 187kmph. The centre of the storm has since moved North through Shandong and off the coast, leaving damages in its wake.
Many of the earlier typhoon deaths had occurred as a result of a landslide, created when a natural dam collapsed due to the storm’s pressure and rainfall in Zhejiang. The collapse occurred after a deluge of at least 160mm of rainwater poured into the dam within a space of three hours.
More than 180,000 people were evacuated in the province, according to the Shandong Emergency Management Bureau, adding further to a necessary earlier evacuation of approximately 1 million people in the Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. The evacuations took place in these areas, as well as in the financial hub of Shanghai, with the threat of flooding.
The total estimated economic toll of the storm has been estimated to be around 18 billion yuan in China, as revealed in the latest update from Shandong, which is including damages of up to 364,000 hectares of crops, as well as the destruction of more than 36,000 homes. It has been approximated that in Shandong alone, the total economic impact on agriculture was a ruinous 939 million yuan.
The popular tourist hub of Qingdao, located in Eastern Shandong, had been forced to close all its tourist sites and suspended 127 trains and all long-distance bus services after issuing a red alert on Sunday, according to official media.
Having already suffered natural disasters of this sort in the past year, Lekima is China’s ninth typhoon since the start of 2019. On Sunday, there had been cancellations in more than 3200 flights, but some suspensions on high-speed railway lines had been lifted in exceptional circumstances, China’s state broadcaster stated.
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
