Tornado kills at least 98 in China

The remains of a steel tower are photographed in Funing County, in east China's Jiangsu Province, on Thursday, June 23, 2016, after a tornado hit the area. A powerful tornado on Thursday killed a number of people and destroyed a large numbers of buildings in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, state media reported.
The remains of a steel tower are photographed in Funing County, in east China's Jiangsu Province, on Thursday, June 23, 2016, after a tornado hit the area. A powerful tornado on Thursday killed a number of people and destroyed a large numbers of buildings in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, state media reported.

BEIJING -- A powerful tornado and hailstorm struck the outskirts of an eastern Chinese city on Thursday, killing at least 98 people, destroying buildings, smashing trees and flipping vehicles on their roofs.

The tornado hit a densely populated area of farms and factories near the city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province, about 500 miles south of Beijing.

Jiangsu Governor Shi Taifeng said this morning that the death toll had risen to 98 people, with 800 others injured, according to the official China News Service. Earlier, the state-run Xinhua News Agency had said 200 people were critically injured.

Rescuers worked this morning to carry injured villagers into ambulances and deliver food and water to others, Xinhua reported, although state broadcaster CCTV said that roads were blocked with trees, downed power lines and other debris. Heavy rain and the possibility of further hailstorms and more tornadoes complicated rescue efforts.

The disaster has been declared a national-level emergency, and on a trip to Uzbekistan, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered central government bodies to provide all necessary assistance.

Tents and other emergency supplies were already being sent from Beijing, CCTV said.

The network showed people carrying the injured to hospitals, cars and trucks lying upside down, street light poles snapped in half, and steel electricity pylons crumpled and lying on their side. Power and telephone communications were knocked out over a broad area.

"I heard the gales and ran upstairs to shut the windows," Xinhua quoted area resident Xie Litian, 62, as saying. "I had hardly reached the top of the stairs when I heard a boom and saw the entire wall with the windows on it torn away."

The roof then collapsed as he raced downstairs, Xie said. After sheltering in a corner for 20 minutes, he emerged to find the neighborhood transformed into a wasteland. "It was like the end of the world," he said.

Jiangsu is a coastal province north of Shanghai. Yancheng is an ancient city with more than 8 million people.

The Jiangsu provincial fire and rescue service provided no word on casualties but said on its microblog that the storm was accompanied by hail. Crews were dispatched to evacuate workers and secure chemicals and other potentially dangerous items at a sprawling solar panel factory in the Yancheng suburb of Funing, it said. No chemical leaks been reported, CCTV said.

Photos posted online showed a wrecked three-story schoolhouse with large trees strewn on its playing field. Its windows had been blown out and its roof and upper floor torn off, along with those of numerous other buildings.

Bodies were shown lying in the open or buried in rubble. At least one hog farm was hit, its livestock covered in bricks and roofing material.

The reports said the tornado struck at about around 2:30 p.m. and hit Funing and Sheyang counties on the city's outskirts the hardest, with winds of up to 78 mph.

Tornadoes occasionally strike southern China during the summer months, but rarely with the scale of death and damage the one Thursday caused.

This year, southern and eastern China have experienced weeks of torrential rain and storms that have caused widespread flooding and dozens of casualties.

The southern part of the country is hit every year during the May-July monsoon season, but this rainy season has been particularly wet. Water levels in some major rivers have exceeded those of 1998, when China was hit by disastrous floods that affected 180 million people, according to state media reports.

A Section on 06/24/2016

Upcoming Events