Perilous Times
107 dead 60 missing following Chinese floods
Torrential rains and severe flooding have left 107 people dead and 60
missing in ten Chinese provinces, mostly along the Yangtze River
following recent storms.
Published: 12:01AM BST 14 Jul 2010
The Xinhua news agency said that as of Tuesday, rain-triggered floods
had affected some 29 million people and 997,000 had been evacuated.
The latest toll is more than double that reported by Xinhua Monday
following rains along the Yangtze River, China's longest, over the past
week.
Heavy downpours in central and eastern China have caused water levels
in major lakes and some river tributaries to rise alarmingly, state
media has said.
Earlier Tuesday, 17 people were confirmed dead and 44 others were
missing after torrential rains sent landslides crashing into villages
in southwestern China, officials and state media said.
In Yunnan province, four people were killed and 42 others went missing
when rocks came crashing down on a local township in the city of
Zhaotong, a local official told AFP.
"The township is located in a river valley surrounded by mountains,
people were buried in their homes," said the official from Qiaojia
county, who asked not to be named.
"Torrential rains caused the landslides," he added.
Another 53 people were injured in the disaster, the official Xinhua
news agency reported.
In neighbouring Sichuan province, two separate landslides left 13
people dead and two missing, the report said.
The disasters continue a run of rain-triggered death and destruction
from flooding across a huge area of southern, central and eastern China
since June that the government said has left hundreds dead.
China is ravaged every summer by heavy rains and resulting deadly
flooding but the extreme weather has been especially severe this year.
Heavy rains continued on Tuesday in regions still recovering from June
flooding.
State television broadcast images of flooded town streets in Anhui
province in the east and inundated villages and agricultural fields in
Hunan in central China.
On one swollen branch of the Yangtze in Anhui province in the city of
Tongcheng, authorities were preparing to blast a leaking dyke to
prevent flood waters from inundating villages, reports said.
Both Poyang Lake in eastern Jiangxi province and Dongting Lake in Hunan
- two of China's largest inland bodies of water - were at or near their
warning levels, officials had said on Monday.
Meteorological authorities have warned that still more heavy rain was
expected in flood-hit regions in coming days.
Rains and flooding have caused economic losses totalling 116 billion
yuan ($17 billion) since the start of the year, state television said.