Typhoon Saomai death toll rises to 130

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - Typhoon Saomai killed at least 130 Chinese and left over 160 missing, Xinhua news agency said, as reports emerged of fishing communities crushed by the strongest storm to make landfall for half a century. Hundreds were also injured and damage was estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, Xinhua said. Several fishermen were at sea when Saomai arrived in southeast China's Fujian province. The Southern Metropolitan Daily reported from Shacheng that many fishing vessels had disappeared after Saomai, with families desperate for news about their sons, husbands and brothers. An official at the Flood Control Headquarters of Fuding city, near Shacheng, declined comment when contacted by Agence France-Presse today, saying the death toll is still being verified. Fuding itself also saw horrific damage, reporting 41 killed, 107 missing and 1,350 people injured as hundreds of houses collapsed, according to Xinhua. In the same area of Fujian province, Saomai had struck with such force that Baisheng village, with some 300 households, had been wiped virtually off the map. 'Almost the whole village was flattened,' an unnamed local resident told Xinhua. Most deaths confirmed so far were from Zhejiang province, immediately to the north of Fujian. In Wenzhou, a booming port city with more than one mln residents, 81 people were reported killed and 11 missing. Six people were crushed to death in a landslide triggered by torrential rain in Linshui city in Zhejiang. In the province of Jiangxi, further to the west, two people were reported killed. Saomai generated winds of up to 216 kilometers an hour when it hit Zhejiang, making it the strongest typhoon to strike China since 1956, according to the China Meteorological Administration. The typhoon was downgraded early Friday to a tropical storm and by early today it was graded again as a tropical depression. http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2006/08/13/afx2946011.html