Typhoon Rananim, the 14th this year, first landed on Shitang Township in the city of Wenling at 8 pm on Aug. 12, 2004. Then the centre of the typhoon moved to the west, tore through southern parts of the city of Taizhou, northern parts of cities of Wenzhou and Lishui. The typhoon weaken into strong tropic storm at 2 am on Aug. 13, then left Zhejiang Province on 9 am and moved into Jiangxi Province.

Due to the effect of the typhoon, central southern parts, eastern parts and northern parts of coastal offing of Zhejiang Province were swept over by the wind with 9-12 level. Especially, the wind was up to over 12 level in the coastal areas of Taizhou City and up to 8-10 level in some parts of inland plain of Taizhou.

The cities of Taizhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo and Shaoxing were also hit by rainstorm and super rainstorm. From 8 am on Aug. 11 to 5 am on Aug. 13, there are 152 weather stations whose accumulative precipitation was over 100 mm, 48 stations over 200 mm, 20 stations over 300 mm, and the maximum precipitation of Futou Station is up to 673.5 mm.

The tide levels of townships of Haimen, Jiantiao of Taizhou City exceeded alarm level. The tide level of Haimen township is up to 7.42 m, which approached the historical maximum level.  
The 14th Typhoon is the strongest one since 1997, due to its large range, astonishing wind speed, enormous intensity and strong rainfall. Up to 8 am. on Aug.17, 75 counties of Zhejiang Province were affected. 12.99 million Locals were suffered, 164 locals died, and 468,000 evacuated. More than 64,000 houses collapsed and 184,000 houses damaged. About 391,000 hectares of crops were hit, 69,000 hectares of crops were destroyed completely. The direct economic loss was up to CNY18.13 billion.

After the disaster occurred, the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched three-level disaster relief emergency procedure in time. Li Xueju, the minister, led a workgroup including the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Finance, Communications, Water, Agriculture and China Seismological Bureau, to the site on 9:30 am Aug.13. The team is responsible to condole victims and instruct disaster relief work.