Effective preparations and accurate weather forecasts greatly reduced the number of casualties caused by typhoon Wipha, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said on Thursday.

"Up to now only five people have died from landslides triggered by the heavy rain. The number of casualties is rare in history," said Zheng.

A man in Dongtou County, Zhejiang Province, ties up a tree to guard against typhoon Wipha.

The fact that the central government has paid great attention to natural disasters was one of the reasons for the few casualties, while meteorological authorities stepped up forecasts to allow local governments to have time to evacuate people, Zheng added.

A total of 2.67 million people in Zhejiang, Fujian, Shanghai and Jiangsu had been relocated by Wednesday, said the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The typhoon destroyed more than 9,600 houses and damaged 42,000 others.

In Zhejiang alone, 1.79 million people were evacuated before Wipha struck, the largest mass evacuation in the history of the province. More than half a million were evacuated because their houses were in poor condition.

Typhoon Wipha hit Wenzhou, in Zhejiang Province, at 2:30?AM Wednesday but was later downgraded to a tropical storm.

It turned into a temperate depression at noon on Thursday in the Yellow Sea, and was still weakening, according to the Liaoning Meteorological Observatory.

(Xinhua News Agency September 21, 2007)