Twenty-nine people were missing in southern Taiwan, Taiwan´s Disaster Relief Center said, and a woman was killed when her vehicle plunged into a ditch in Kaohsiung county in heavy rain Friday.
Morakot was centered 70 kilometers off China´s southeastern Fujian province Sunday morning. Taiwan´s Central Weather Bureau said the storm had winds of up to 108 kilometers per hour and was headed northwest toward China at a speed of 11 kph.
About 1 million people were evacuated from China´s eastern coastal provinces by early Sunday — more than 490,000 people in Zhejiang and 480,000 others in neighboring Fujian. Authorities in Fujian called 48,000 boats back to harbor.
The meteorological station in eastern Zhejiang issued a typhoon alert and said the storm was likely to make landfall sometime between noon and nighttime, bringing heavy rain to coastal areas.
Thirty-nine outbound flights from the city of Wenzhou were canceled Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Morakot hit Taiwan late Friday but traversed the island Saturday and weakened to a tropical storm in the Taiwan Strait. Morakot smashed into the northern Philippines early Friday, triggering floods and landslides that killed at least 21 people.
Several southern Taiwan counties recorded more than 80 inches (200 centimeters) of rain on Friday and Saturday, the worst flooding to hit the area in half a century, the Central Weather Bureau reported.
The Disaster Relief Center reported Sunday that flash flooding had washed away a makeshift home in southern Kaohsiung, leaving 16 people missing. Three others were swept away in southeastern Taitung county, including two policemen helping to evacuate villagers.
Ten others were missing, including three fishermen from a capsized boat and three others whose cars fell into a swelling river, it said.
In southern Pingtung county, 4,000 people were stranded in inundated villages waiting for police boats to rescue them, news media reported.
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