China's death toll from Typhoon Saomai rose to 114 today as authorities said some victims were evacuees who died when buildings used as shelters collapsed in the strongest storm to hit China in more than five decades.
More rain fell today in inland areas, where the weakened storm was moving westward as residents of the south east coast cleared away the debris of wrecked houses.
The death toll rose after rescuers found eight more bodies in Fuding, a coastal city in Fujian province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said 183 people were still missing.
In the inland province of Jiangxi, an elderly couple were swept away on Friday as they checked their farmland during the storm, Xinhua said. It said one member of the couple was dead and the other missing.
Much of the area is still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which killed more than 600 people last month.
Hardest-hit by Saomai was the coastal city of Wenzhou, where at least 81 people were killed after the storm hit late Thursday with winds up to 170 mph, reportedly destroying more than 50,000 houses, sinking more than 1,000 fishing boats and blacking out six cities.
Cangnan County on Wenzhou's outskirts suffered 43 deaths, some of them in the collapse of two to four-storey residential buildings of reinforced concrete that were thought to be safe in high wind, said a spokesman for the Communist Party committee.
The county evacuated 100,000 people ahead of the storm, said the spokesman.