2 Millions Evacuated as Powerful Typhoon Slams China

World | September 19, 2007, Wednesday // 00:00

A powerful typhoon slammed into China's east coast early on Wednesday, hours after Chinese authorities evacuated more than two million people with the help of text messages and old-fashioned knocks on the door.

All along the heavily populated eastern seaboard, officials shut down schools and factories and ordered ships and fishing boats back to port as cadres in raincoats hustled residents from homes at low elevations, clutching plastic bags of possessions.

By Tuesday evening, more than two million people in Shanghai, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces had been moved from harm's way. In Zhejiang alone, where Typhoon Wipha came ashore, about 1.6 million residents were uprooted, the area's biggest evacuation in nearly six decades of communist rule.

Zhejiang authorities also put 20,000 members of the People's Liberation Army and other emergency workers on standby and said all officials had to put storm duty ahead of other tasks to aim for "no death, few injuries and as little damage as possible," the New China News Agency reported.

To the south, officials in Fujian province sent 1.4 million text messages warning people as the typhoon was approaching and urging them to stock up on food and water and avoid going outdoors once the storm struck, according to local flood-control headquarters.

In Shanghai, a city of 20 million people, more than 291,000 were relocated by Tuesday evening. Zhang Jiayi, deputy chief of the city's flood-control headquarters, called the storm the most severe test Shanghai had faced in decades.

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