Typhoon slams into eastern Chinese city

A typhoon hit a sprawling city in prosperous eastern China yesterday after nearly a million villagers and farmers had been evacuated from flimsy coastal and hillside huts to safety.

Typhoon Khanun, which spared the island of Taiwan on Saturday after forecasts predicted a near direct hit, made landfall in China's mountainous Zhejiang province, where storms regularly trigger fatal floods and landslides.

The new city of Taizhou, with a population of over five million, took the full brunt, a city government official said, adding that those evacuated by the army had been taken to schools, railway stations, hotels and other solid buildings for protection.

"Signboards have been blown down and definitely trees will be uprooted and houses damaged," the official said, adding that 330,000 people had been moved to safety in Taizhou alone.

"It's too early to talk about damage to property."

State television showed pictures of waves crashing ashore, flooded city streets, trees bent double and rescuers carrying old folk to safety on their backs.

Khanun had a radius of 400 km and was moving northwest at about 25 to 30 kph, prompting one official to predict the storm could cause more havoc than Typhoon Matsa which swept up China's east coast in August, killing three people and forcing more than a million to flee their homes.

Details of damage and casualties were not expected until today.

With its zigzag coastline, Taizhou is home to several ports, one being Taizhou Bay Haimen, with more than 10,000 tonnes of handling capacity.

In nearby Leqing Bay is China's largest tidal power station.

Xinhua said Zhejiang had so far evacuated 814,267 people to safer places. About 35,400 ships and other vessels had returned to port.

The ancient trade port of Ningbo was directly in the path of the storm which was unleashing maximum sustained winds of up to 177 kilometres per hour , according to Tropical Storm Risk Web typhoon tracker, http://tsr. mssl.ucl.ac.uk/