BEIJING (AP) – The death toll from Typhoon Saomai – the strongest storm to hit China in 50 years – rose to 114 Sunday as more evacuees died when buildings used as shelters collapsed, authorities said.

While residents of China’s southeast coast cleared away the debris of their wrecked houses, rain fell inland Sunday as the weakened storm moved west.

The death toll rose after rescuers found eight more bodies in Fuding, a coastal city in Fujian province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday. It said 183 people were still missing.

Much of the area is still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which killed more than 600 people last month.

Hardest-hit by Saomai was the coastal city of Wenzhou, where at least 81 people were killed after the storm struck late Thursday with winds up to 170 mph, reportedly destroying more than 50,000 houses, sinking more than 1,000 fishing boats and blacking out six cities.

Cangnan County on Wenzhou’s outskirts suffered 43 deaths, some of them in the collapse of two- to four-story residential buildings of reinforced concrete that were thought to be safe in high wind, said a spokesman for the Communist Party committee.

Total economic losses in Zhejiang and Fujian were estimated at $1.4 billion, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Rescue workers were handing out cooking oil, sacks of rice, clothes and bedding to thousands of people living in shelters in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. Authorities were helping to disinfect drinking water, as well as areas with standing water to prevent disease, China Central Television said.

Bulldozers involved in the cleanup plowed through piles of wreckage and mud, pushing aside twisted metal and chunks of concrete.

Saomai, the Vietnamese name for the planet Venus, was the eighth major storm to hit China during an unusually violent typhoon season. It killed at least two people in the Philippines earlier and dumped rain on Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

China’s weather bureau said Saomai was the most powerful typhoon since its record-keeping began in 1949.

In 1956, a typhoon with winds up to 145 mph killed 4,900 people in Zhejiang.

AP-ES-08-13-06 0949EDT