BEIJING - A tropical storm killed two people when it roared into southern China and floods in the industrial northeast destroyed hundreds of houses and left nine people missing, state media said on Monday.
Tropical storm Sanvu swept ashore in China's south coastal province of Guangdong on Saturday, bringing down trees and billboards and sending telephone boxes flying, as the heaviest rain this year inundated northeastern Liaoning.
Two pedestrians were killed in Guangdong when a two-metre wall at a construction site collapsed, the China Daily said.
“Eastern parts of Guangdong and the Pearl Delta region will continue to be struck by heavy rainfall in coming days,” it said.
Floods hit 116 towns in the northeast, destroying more than 2,500 houses, toppling bridges and damaging 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of crops.
The Liaoning provincial meteorological station forecast moderate to heavy rains in some parts of the province in the coming week.
While extremes of weather hit the north and south, including a heat wave in the south and high humidity in the capital, Beijing, more than 1,000 army personnel joined in relief efforts in southwest Yunnan where an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale hit on Saturday, injuring 26 people.
“They have evacuated more than 12,000 people and rescued more than 600 from dangerous sites,” it said.
Earthquakes are common in China. In December 2003, a tremor measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale struck the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang. At least 10 people, mostly herdsmen, were killed and 700 mud and brick houses destroyed.
Yunnan's Huize county was hit by a quake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale last week. Nine people were injured.
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