The death toll from Typhoon Talim continued to rise yesterday, with 97 confirmed dead and 30 still missing. The victims are from East China's Fujian Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces and Central China's Hubei Province.

Altogether 16.2 million people have been affected by the storm, which landed on Thursday at Putian in Fujian Province, according to the latest report released by Ministry of Civil Affairs. More than 1.7 million have been displaced.

By yesterday, direct economic losses had amounted to a record 12.5 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion). The central government allocated 182 million yuan (US$22.4 million) as emergency fund yesterday to the disaster-stricken areas.

The floods caused by Talim have destroyed 66,000 houses, with 173,000 damaged. 905,000 hectares of crops have been inundated, 15 per cent of which are unsalvageable, the ministry said.

In Zhejiang, more than 2.3 million people in the cities of Wenzhou, Taizhou, Ningbo, Lishui, Huzhou, Zhoushan and Lin'an were affected, with 23 deaths reported.

In Anhui, the death toll rose to 59, with 12 others missing.

Fortunately, most of the 2,000 tourists stranded on Mount Lushan by landslides triggered by torrential rains have been evacuated to safe places.

A total of 933.5 millimetres of precipitation were recorded in the area, where over 40 landslides, mud-and-rock flows and cave-ins took place.

By Sunday, Talim had dumped more than 400 millimetres of rain in the counties of Yuexi, Huoshan and Jinzai in Anhui Province, with over 200 millimetres of rain falling in many other areas.

In Jiangxi, rainstorms, flooding, landslides, mud-and-rock flows and a river embankment breach claimed seven lives and left four others missing.

In the province more than 7,100 houses were destroyed, 210,000 hectares of crops damaged and 3.1 million people in 24 cities and counties affected, causing more than 1.7 billion yuan (US$220 million ) in direct economic losses.

(China Daily 09/06/2005 page2)