Chaos follows Chinese typhoon

Some 50,000 homes were destroyed by the typhoon. Picture / Reuters

LANPING VILLAGE, China - Lin Xianglian was cowering in his kitchen from the strongest typhoon to hit China in half a century when he heard a roar and the house next door collapsed.

"I didn't dare go look what was happening. The wind was so strong my wife and I together were leaning on the front door to stop it blowing in and water was flooding in the back," recalls farmer Lin, 68, sipping tea from a metal bowl.

"We could do nothing as my two neighbours got buried alive."

Aid arrived in time for them to be dug out alive, but Lin says he has no idea where his friends are now or if they survived their injuries.

"Nobody has told us anything. Nobody has been round to help clear up. It seems we've been left on our own," he says through metal-capped teeth in uncertain-sounding Mandarin.

Typhoon Saomai punched into Cangnan county, where Lin's village is located in the eastern province of Zhejiang, on Thursday after authorities had moved hundreds of thousands in the densely populated commercial province to safety.

The official death toll stood at 105 on Saturday with at least 190 missing. The authorities mobilised 10,000 troops, paramilitary police and rescue workers in Zhejiang alone to help with a massive clean-up operation, state television reported.

Bulldozers started clearing the wreckage of more than 50,000 homes flattened by the storm as relief workers handed out bottles of water, rice and cooking oil. A dozen psychiatrists arrived to counsel survivors, Xinhua news agency said.

Some residents of the remote, mountainous region said they suspect the death toll could be much higher.

"I heard hundreds died. The government has shut off villages where the death toll is really high to stop news getting out," said a fashionably dressed youth who declined to be identified.

The Communist government, determined to maintain stability at all costs, has a habit of covering up bad news, although disaster death tolls are no longer supposed to be state secrets.

In Cangnan town itself, knee-deep floodwater, fetid and mixed with silt, sewage and motor oil, lapped at pedestrians' feet and flowed into shops on the main street.

More than a day after the storm had passed, rubbish sat stewing in the more than 30 degree heat.

"The quality of people isn't very good here. Nobody wants to clear up," said resident Chen Shaohe, holding his daughter's hand and surveying the damage from a dry spot. "The reaction of the government has been slow, but what do you expect?"

Further down the road, Zhang Shiqiu looked forlornly at the remains of her red-brick, black-tiled house, crying quietly. "Gone, all gone," she whispered, rocking slowly backwards and forwards from a perch on the rubble.

In the fishing village of Xiaguan - where Saomai hit with winds of 216 km per hour, more powerful than a 1956 typhoon that killed more than 3000 - one house appeared to have exploded outwards, blasting bricks into the street.

Workers offloaded blocks of ice, to help preserve bodies, for the two-hour drive up a narrow road clogged by fallen trees and rocks that runs so high it passes through cloud, towards the worst-hit villages in Cangnan county.

At least 41 villagers, including eight children, were killed when a house collapsed in the town of Jinxiang, an hour's drive from where the typhoon made landfall, a local official said.

In Lanping village, Lin sat in his candle-lit kitchen and pondered rebuilding his own damaged house. He was philosophical. "I saw the great typhoon of 1956. This one was only so-so compared to that," he said.

- REUTERS