Typhoon Winnie raged over Taiwan, the Philippines and China yesterday and on Monday, killing at least 43 people and triggering widespread flooding, landslides and building collapses.
The storm killed at least 31 people in Taiwan during the past two days and rescuers were searching for 13 people missing after a hillside security wall and 10 residential blocks collapsed.
In China, six people were killed and hundreds were injured yesterday. Another six died as the fringes of the typhoon caused flooding in the Philippines.
Typhoon Winnie hit northern Taiwan on Monday, triggering landslides and causing floods that turned streets into rivers.
Rescue teams working in the rubble of collapsed buildings yesterday morning found the bodies of a son in the arms of his father. Two more bodies were recovered in the afternoon.
Fifteen people were killed by the collapse and 48 people were injured, police added.
A group of residents whose houses were flooded shouted their anger at the Prime Minister, Mr Lien Chan, as he inspected an inundated residential area in Taipei.
"We want justice. Give us a safe living environment and we don't want to live in fear," said a tearful woman whose relatives drowned in a basement.
They said shoddy construction materials and the government's failure to observe water and soil conservation, along with illegal property development on hillside land, were the causes of the landslides and floods.
The five-storey apartment complex gave way after a landslide toppled a security wall that crashed into the complex, police said.
"The whole scene looks as if it has gone through an explosion," a witness said.
The typhoon forced government offices, financial markets and schools to close on Monday. Most had reopened yesterday, officials said.
The provincial government said Winnie inflicted about £5 million worth of agricultural damage on Taiwan, according to preliminary estimates.
The typhoon then tore across south-eastern China yesterday, killing at least six people, injuring hundreds and toppling thousands of homes, officials said.
However, casualties were limited because local officials had evacuated coastal towns and villages in the direct path of the typhoon containing nearly one million residents.
Officials said five people were killed when houses collapsed in the town of Jinhua in eastern Zhejiang province, which took the full brunt of the storm.
The fringes of Typhoon Winnie also flooded Manila with torrential rains, killing six people and causing 25,000 to flee their homes yesterday. - (Reuter)