Typhoon Kills 50 In Asia

Tropical Storm Chanchu pummeled southern China on Thursday, killing at least 11 people to bring its death toll in Asia to 50 while flooding scores of homes in an area where officials evacuated more than 1 million people.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 11 died after the storm plowed into southern China early Thursday, with four others missing, but gave no details. Earlier reports said eight people were killed near Shantou in the northern tip of China's Guangdong province where the storm made landfall, including two children whose houses collapsed on top of them.

China said just over 1 million people have been moved to safety.

Twenty-seven Vietnamese fishermen, meanwhile, were believed missing after three boats went down in Chinese waters after being swept up in the storm, officials said Thursday.

Another 67 on six other boats were able to safely reach an island, a coast guard official from Vietnam's central Quang Ngai province said. Vietnam has asked Chinese authorities to help search for the missing.

Chanchu was the most severe typhoon to strike the South China Sea region during the month of May and already was blamed for 37 deaths and the destruction of thousands of homes in the Philippines last weekend. It was downgraded to a severe tropical storm after hitting the coast of China early Thursday.

Eight people were killed when the storm made land near Shantou in the northern tip of China's Guangdong province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. included two children who died when their houses collapsed on top of them.

Taiwan also reported the deaths of two women in the southern region of Pingtung who were swept away on Wednesday by floodwaters during heavy rains brought by the typhoon.

China said just over 1 million people have been moved to safety in Guangdong and Fujian provinces just to the north, a number that grew through the day, apparently indicating that most have yet to return home. The storm bypassed the financial center of Hong Kong.

Thousands of people evacuated from fishing boats and low-lying areas were staying with relatives, in tents, or in schools and government warehouses, said an official of the Chaozhou city government in Guangdong near where the storm, then still a typhoon, churned into the coastline on Wednesday.

"The typhoon's impact here was pretty major," said the official, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would only give his surname, Zhang.

Television news showed violent waves pounding sea walls along the Chinese coast. Reports said winds and rain damaged dikes, uprooted trees and brought down buildings along large portions of the Guangdong coast.

The storm flooded 192 homes and cut electricity in the Shantou area overnight Thursday before moving north into Fujian province before dawn, Xinhua said.

By midday Thursday, Chanchu, which means pearl in the Cantonese dialect spoken in Guangdong, was centered about 18 miles northeast of Fujian's provincial capital, Fuzhou, the Hong Kong Observatory said.

It was picking up speed as it headed along the Fujian coast and out toward the sea, moving at about 28 mph, the observatory said. It said the storm was expected to enter the East China Sea later Thursday.

The China Meteorological Administration's Web site indicated the storm would head out to sea Friday morning.

An official with the Fujian Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said the storm had already weakened and would likely blow out of the province by late Thursday. The official, who gave only his surname, Huang, said winds at the storm's center were blowing at about 56 mph.

Rain falling in China's commercial center of Shanghai was expected to continue through Friday. The government's China Meteorological Administration warned of severe weather in Zhejiang province just south of the city as well as Fujian.

Taiwan also ordered schools on the outlying island of Kinmen closed on Thursday because of the storm. The storm earlier caused an oil tanker to run aground near Taiwan's southern port of Kaohsiung after breaking its mooring. Rescuers in helicopters lifted 13 crew members off the ship, which was later freed with no leakage of oil.

Data collected by the Hong Kong Observatory shows Chanchu was the "most intense" typhoon to strike in the South China Sea in the month of May, according to scientific officer T.C. Lee.

However, the early arrival of the year's first typhoon doesn't necessarily portend an unusually active storm season, Lee said in a telephone interview.

"It's still the beginning, we still have about four or five months to go, so it's hard to tell the pattern," Lee said, adding that the observatory's forecasts call for four to six typhoons to affect Hong Kong this year, a number he said was about average.

Many scientists say they see a link between increasingly severe storms such as Hurricane Katrina that battered New Orleans last year and rising global temperatures.

The United Nations says the incidence of storms in the Western Pacific region rose by about 2 percent from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Last year was particularly heavy, with a record 10 typhoons and tropical storms striking Japan, leaving nearly 220 people dead or missing, the largest casualty toll since 1983.

"We see quite big variations from year to year so it's too early to connect with climate change," Lee said.