As of Thursday morning, no casualties had been reported in eastern Fujian Province after the year's second strongest typhoon, Aere, made landfall at Fuqing City at around 4:30 PM Wednesday.

Before Aere struck, some 516,000 people were evacuated and more than 10,600 vessels were recalled to port.

By 10:00 PM Wednesday, the eye of Aere moved southward at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour to Shishi City, after sweeping past Putian, Chongwu and Jinjiang. It was also expected to affect the cities of Quanzhou and Xiamen.

Most of Fujian was hit by moderate to heavy rainfall. The provincial flood control office reported that 10 counties and districts received more than 100 millimeters of precipitation, and traffic in some counties was halted.

Flights from Fujian's Xiamen City to Jinmen in Taiwan were suspended and the expressway from Fuzhou, the provincial capital, to Jinjiang was closed.

Although Aere caused damage in Fujian, it helped to ease the province's drought, said Yang Zhiying, vice director of the provincial drought control headquarters.

In Fujian's neighboring province of Zhejiang, one villager was missing and more than 17,000 people were evacuated in Wenzhou City.

A man from Butou village was swept away by floodwater as he was crossing a swollen stream on Wednesday morning. He had not been found by Thursday morning, according to the city's flood and drought control bureau.

Strong storms also hit most areas around Wenzhou. Meter-deep flooding trapped nearly 20,000 people in more than 10 villages.

Aere, the 18th typhoon this year, struck less than two weeks after Rananim caused the deaths of at least 164 people in Zhejiang Province on August 12.

Meanwhile, flooding along the Yellow River and heavy rain and landslides in Sichuan Province are wreaking havoc in the nation's north and southwest.

At least 10 people have been killed since Tuesday in Sichuan Province's Dechang County, with four others injured and seven still missing following heavy rain that caused mudflows and landslides.

Heavy rains of up to 170 millimeters swept over eight townships, destroying or damaging more than 2,120 homes, affecting about 5,000 people and leaving more than 1,400 homeless.

The local government has earmarked 300,000 yuan (US$36,144) for disaster relief. Rescuers continue to search for those who are missing.

In the north, tens of thousands of people living on the downstream floodplains of the Yellow River in Shandong Province are facing floods as water levels continue to rise.

A flood crest, the largest in six years, appeared early Wednesday in the Shandong section of the Yellow River, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The water flow surged to 3,540 cubic meters per second Wednesday morning, a five-year record, and the water level topped the 63.05-meter mark at the Gaocun Hydrological Station on the lower reaches of the river.

Local water authorities warned that the flood crest could hit 63.3 meters. The warning line is at 63.4 meters.

By Wednesday night, some newly formed tidal zones in Heze, Shandong Province, were under water. Water flow in that section of the Yellow River, which began swelling on Tuesday, rose to 2,400 cubic meters from 800 cubic meters per second in less than eight hours.

Over the past few days, water levels also rose on the Beiluohe, Jinghe and Weihe rivers, major tributaries of the Yellow River. Sediment discharge reached a record 442 kilograms per cubic meter of water at Tongguang Hydrological station in Shaanxi Province owing to rainfall upstream.

Flood control authorities have fully opened huge sluice gates at the Xiaolangdi Reservoir in Henan Province to flush away riverbed silt and quickly remove deposited silt.

The flushing of sediment can help prevent floods from ravaging the wide floodplains, where more than 1.8 million people live in Henan and Shandong provinces.

The 5,464-kilometer-long Yellow River originates on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and winds through eight provinces and autonomous regions before emptying into the Bohai Sea.

A notorious troublemaker for the past 2,000 years, the Yellow River is infamous for overflowing its banks two years out of every three and changing its course every 100 years.

Now the river carries some 1.6 billion tons of silt annually, depositing a quarter of it on the downstream riverbed.

(Xinhua News Agency & China Daily August 26, 2004)