One person was killed and three others injured in east China's Zhejiang Province as Typhoon Wipha made landfall on Wednesday morning, according to local sources.

Xiong Zhengjia, 29, a worker from central China's Hubei Province, was killed when his house in Jishi village, of southern Zhejiang's Wenzhou city, collapsed at about 2:00 AM on Wednesday.

Three people have been taken to hospital.

Wipha hit Cangnan County, Wenzhou, at 2:30 AM, destroying 669 houses, disrupting power supplies to 1,867 villages, affecting about five million people and resulting in direct economic losses of 2.9 billion yuan (US$38 million).

Cangnan, where Typhoon Saomai left 153 people dead last year, saw a total of 129,978 people evacuated on the eve of Wipha's landfall.

Schools in eight of the Zhejiang's 11 cities closed on Wednesday.

Downpours continued in the province, which has received an average of 102.9 millimeters of rainfall by 6:00 AM.

Wipha weakened to tropical storm at about 11:00 AM, with wind speeds at its eye measuring 83 kilometers per hour, and moved northwestward, approaching the commercial hub of Shanghai.

(Xinhua News Agency September 19, 2007)