Super Typhoon Sepat spawns deadly China tornado*

    * Story Highlights
    * NEW: Tornado born from Typhoon Sepat claims 14 lives
    * 900,000 flee homes on mainland China before advancing typhoon
    * In Taiwan, flights canceled at airports in Taipei and Kaohsiung
    * Major roads outside Manila flooded with water up to 1.5 meters deep

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Typhoon Sepat swept China's southern coast
on Sunday, killing 14 people and forcing almost a million people from
their homes before weakening into a tropical storm.

A fisherman covers his house with nets in Zhejiang province on Saturday,
before Typhoon Sepat made landfall.

Eleven of the deaths were attributed to a tornado that spun off the
typhoon, wrecking houses and injuring more than 60 residents in China's
Zhejiang Province, Xinhua state news agency reported.

"The bizarre wind smashed all the windows of our four-storey building
and tore down my mum's old house in no more than one minute," the agency
quoted 48-year-old villager Zhang Zhongling as saying. "Just like a
hurricane."

More than 900,000 people in southern China have been relocated to higher
ground after the typhoon cut power and flooded homes in parts of Taiwan
and the Philippines on Saturday.

Sepat is heading northwest toward Jiangxi Province and could unleash 400
mm (15.75 inches) of rain in southern Fujian province in the next three
days, said Xinhua.

The storm destroyed hundreds of homes and cut off power from Fujian in
the south to Zhejiang in the east of the country.
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However, Xinhua reported relatively light economic damage of only $42
million across the country.

Typhoon Sepat did not make landfall over the Philippines but exacerbated
monsoon rains as it rumbled past the archipelago.
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Disaster officials in the Philippines said three people drowned in
flooding. Nearly 550,000 people were affected by floodwaters in Manila
and the northern provinces, and more than 3,500 people were sheltering
in evacuation centers.

Taiwan's disaster center said 27 people had been hurt in the typhoon,
which cut power to more than 70,000 homes and forced airlines to delay
flights from the north and south of the island.