Related story: Tropical
storm Bopha approaching China
BEIJING, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from
typhoon Prapiroon has risen to 80 in China, with nine people still missing, said
the National Natural Disaster Reduction Committee on Monday.
The tropical storm forced 844,000 people in southern
China's Guangdong and Hainan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
to evacuate to safer ground, the committee said.
Prapiroon made landfall between Yangxi County and
Dianbai County in Guangdong at 7:20 p.m. last Thursday, bringing torrential
rains. It weakened into a tropical storm after swirling into neighboring Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region last Friday.
Fifty-four people in Guangdong and 26 in Guangxi have
been killed. Seven people are missing in Guangdong and two in Guangxi.
The storm affected more than 10 million people in the
area, and caused direct economic losses of 7.23 billion yuan (900 million U.S.
dollars).
Nearly 30,000 houses collapsed and 140,000 others
were damaged, said the committee.
More than 20,000 vessels returned safely to harbor in
the southern island province of Hainan before Prapiroon arrived.
Prapiroon, which means Rain God in Thai, formed in
the South China Sea and was declared a typhoon last Wednesday.
The fourth typhoon Bilis in mid-July claimed at least
612 lives and the fifth Kaemi in late July killed at least 35 people in China.
The tropic storm Prapiroon passed through Guangxi on
Sunday morning after pelting in the region for 60 hours. It moved westward to
southwest China's Yunnan Province and Vietnam as it continues to weaken,
according to the regional meteorological observatory of Guangxi.
Reconstruction is underway in the Prapiroon-hit
areas.
In Guangdong, a province hard hit by typhoons this
year, the provincial taxation department announced on Monday eight preferential
policies, including the reduction or exemption from income taxes, to support
reconstruction in disaster-hit areas.
In Guangxi, eight teams of health workers have been
dispatched to Prapiroon-hit areas to instruct people on sanitation to avoid
epidemics, according to the regional disease prevention and control center.
Air traffic and water transport returned to normal in
Hainan by last Saturday.
According to China's Central Meteorological
Observatory, new typhoons are expected to hit China this month. Enditem
