Shanghai will improve its drainage system to prevent roads from being flooded during big storms, or typhoons, officials said yesterday.

Meanwhile, officials are still trying to evaluate the economic losses caused by last weekend's Typhoon Matsa, which could be more than 1 billion yuan (US$123 million).

The damage figures from the city's 18 districts and Chongming County have been forwarded to the Shanghai Flood Control Headquarters, and are under evaluation.

Calculated until August 7, the official figure available was a little more than 100 million yuan, however.

But, an official with the headquarters revealed yesterday that the figure collected by the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau had already hit 1.3 billion yuan by August 8 noon.

At the meeting to conclude the city's Matsa campaign yesterday, a Jinshan District official reported losses of up to 400 million yuan.

"We are trying to verify the figures and the result should be out by the end of this month," said Zhang Zhenyu, a headquarters spokesman.

Officials from the civil affairs bureau refused to comment on the figure.

At the meeting yesterday, officials lauded the preventive measures taken before the typhoon.

"We succeeded in minimizing the damage caused by the worst typhoon in eight years," said Zhang Jiayi, the headquarters vice director.

Seven people were killed in the typhoon. Three were killed in a work shed and house collapse in Minhang and Fengxian districts. The other four were killed by power shock in Pudong New Area, Yangpu and Songjiang districts after electricity wires were blown off.

Matsa began influencing the city last Friday with strong winds and storms, forcing weathermen to sound a typhoon alert around the city.

The alert wasn't canceled on Sunday when Matsa departed the city and was downgraded to a tropical storm.

During the typhoon, all outdoor activities were suspended. Altogether 160,000 residents in shabby houses were evacuated. Most were relocated to schools.

More than 200 roads were under water and hundreds of thousands of homes were flooded, and a wide blackout was caused as around 400 high voltage power lines were knocked offline in the typhoon. Matsa also toppled 2,700 trees around the city, and forced 785 flights to be canceled and 261 others delayed.

(Shanghai Daily August 11, 2005)