An old woman points at the wreckage left by tropical storm Kaemi yesterday at Gantang Village in Central China's Hunan Province. [newsphoto]

The system weakened into a tropical storm on Tuesday night and into a tropical depression yesterday morning.

However, it still drenched South China's Guangdong Province claiming at least two lives. In East China's Jiangxi Province, heavy rain led to a mountain torrent in Shangyou County, causing five deaths with 20 people missing.

Fujian Province in East China evacuated 634,000 people to safe places. The province also sent 6 million mobile phone text messages to residents reminding them to make preparations for the typhoon.

"By 5 pm we had not received reports of deaths or injury," said Wen Chonghai, an official with the provincial civil affairs department in a telephone interview.

It also caused two levee breaches in the province, but no casualties were reported.

A 300-metre section of a dam in Jinjiang was breached at 4 pm yesterday, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The levee, separating sea water and an industrial park in Jinjiang, has already been repaired. Further work will be done to strengthen it.

The other breach happened in Zhao'an County yesterday morning. A river burst its banks for a length of 200 metres, threatening six villages. Rescue work is ongoing.

The system is moving northwest at a speed of 10 kilometres per hour.

In the next few days it will continue to bring heavy rain to Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Hunan provinces, according to the forecast released by the China Meteorological Administration.

Typhoon season began in June, and of the four to make landfall three have affected the rail network.

The Ministry of Railways said on its website that 17 rail arteries have been flooded and forced to stop service a total of 78 times, meaning 604 lost hours.

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