TYPHOON Soudelor, which lashed Taiwan, dumped heavy rain and winds on the Chinese mainland yesterday, leaving 17 people dead or missing, collapsing homes and trees and cutting power to more than a million homes.

    Soudelor made landfall in Fujian Province late Saturday night and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved across the region.

    Rains from the typhoon triggered mudslides in mountainous Pingyang County in Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province, north of Fujian, killing 12 people and leaving five others missing, the county government said yesterday.

    According to the local flood control and drought relief headquarters, the dead and missing people may have been washed away by floods or buried under the collapsed houses. In Wencheng County, precipitation within 24 hours hit 645 mm, the heaviest in 100 years, officials said.

    A total of 221,900 people were affected in Wenzhou, with a direct economic loss of 248 million yuan (US$39 million).

    Zhejiang Province issued an orange alert for rainstorms earlier yesterday.

    The Fujian Provincial Civil Affairs Department said that the storm collapsed 36 houses and damaged 281 others. Authorities had evacuated more than 370,000 people and ordered around 32,000 boats back to port before the typhoon struck land.

    State broadcaster CCTV showed people wading in knee-deep water in the provincial capital of Fuzhou and said that some streets were submerged under 80 centimeters of water.

    Strong winds caused power outages to more than 1.41 million households even before the storm made landfall in Fujian, Xinhua News Agency said.

    Three airports were closed and more than 530 flights canceled while more than 7,000 soldiers and police were on standby, provincial authorities said.

    In Taiwan, where the typhoon made landfall Saturday, the authorities said six people died, four were missing and a further 102 were injured in eastern Hualien County.

    The dead or missing included an 8-year-old girl, her twin sister and their mother who were swept out to sea, and a firefighter who was killed while another was injured after being hit by a drunk driver as they attempted to move a fallen tree.

    The storm downed trees, traffic lights and power lines on the island, causing more than 4 million households to lose electricity. More than 500 flights were canceled or delayed.

    Typhoons are common this time of year in the South China Sea and Pacific, picking up strength from warm waters but losing it over land.(SD-Xinhua)