Asia-Pacific

Chanchu kills nearly 90 in Asia

(AP)
Updated: 2006-05-20 14:49
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HANOI, Vietnam (AP) _ The Asia-wide death toll from Tropical Storm Chanchu stood at nearly 90, with almost 200 Vietnamese fisherman still missing at sea, as the storm weakened Saturday off southern Japan.

The missing fishermen were in two separate groups of boats in different parts of the South China Sea. Authorities from Danang revised the number of sailors missing on Saturday, saying about 198 remained unaccounted for from both groups. Officials earlier said nearly 250 were lost. The death toll was also lowered from 28 to 24 bodies recovered.

High waves in southern Japan killed one teenager and left another missing after they'd been swimming, said coast guard spokesman Shoji Kawabata. The storm brought rain to parts of southern and central Japan, said forecasting service Weather Underground.

Earlier, Chanchu battered several areas around the South China sea after rising to typhoon strength and killed 37 in the Philippines a week ago. Eighty-seven people are confirmed to have died across the region.

It was downgraded from a typhoon on Thursday as it hit China, but still caused landslides and flooding and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million people.

Landslides and collapsing buildings killed 15 people and left four missing in China's Fujian province, the provincial Water Resources Department said.

Eight more people died in neighboring Guangdong province, it said.

Two fishing boats from Vietnam's central city of Danang that survived the storm were returning to port with 20 corpses and four surviving sailors, said Ha Van Thong, a coast guard official from Danang.

Thong said nearly 60 other survivors had been rescued from the water.

In total, 176 fishermen remained missing from the Danang group, he said. Vietnam contacted officials in China and Taiwan to assist with the rescue.

Meanwhile, another 22 Vietnamese fishermen from central Quang Ngai province also remained missing after their boats were caught in the storm in a separate incident. Four bodies have been recovered from that group, said Nguyen Sau of the Quang Ngai border control.

Flooding in southern Taiwan swept two women to their deaths.

T.C. Lee, an official with the Hong Kong Observatory, said Chanchu was the most intense typhoon on record to strike in the South China Sea in May, an early month in the annual typhoon season.

Lee said the early arrival of the year's first typhoon did not necessarily portend an unusually active storm season, and said the observatory forecast an average year of six to eight typhoons affecting the territory.

But a Chinese meteorologist quoted by the Xinhua News Agency, Ding Yihui of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the storm appeared to be a sign of increasingly extreme weather events, a phenomena some scientists have linked to rising global temperatures.