Perilous Times
17 dead, 44 missing as landslides hit China towns
By CHI-CHI ZHANG
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 13, 2010; 4:44 AM
BEIJING -- Landslides slammed into three mountain hamlets in western
China early Tuesday, killing 17 people and leaving 44 missing, while
crews drained a fast-rising reservoir in another part of the country
following heavy rains.
The landslides swept through three different areas before dawn, state
media said. In the worst-hit town of Xiaohe in Yunnan province, four
died and rescuers were searching for 42 others, the official provincial
newspaper Yunnan Daily reported on its website. Another 38 were injured.
In neighboring Sichuan province, seven died and one person was missing
in Yandai village, while rescuers recovered six bodies and were
searching for one person in Sima village, the Xinhua News Agency
reported.
Meanwhile, the waters in a reservoir near the far western city of
Golmud began to subside Tuesday after hundreds of workers and soldiers
finished digging a diversion channel, an official at the Qinghai
province water bureau said.
The reservoir at one point swelled to almost four feet (more than a
meter) above its warning level, the Golmud city government website
said. Over the weekend, about 10,000 residents were evacuated as
soldiers transported sandbags, rocks and dirt and used bulldozers to
dig the emergency waterway, the website said.
Still, parts of Golmud, a transport and mining hub on the edge of the
Tibetan plateau, were already under six feet (two meters) of water,
Xinhua reported.
Usually prone to drought, Qinghai has seen increasingly heavy rainfalls
in recent years. This year's rains fell as snow melted in the
surrounding mountains. Dozens of reservoirs swelled beyond their
warning levels, said the water bureau official.
Heavy rain is expected to sweep through the Yangtze River basin,
including Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces, through Wednesday,
the China Meteorological Administration said.
Parts of China experience annual flooding. In the first ten days of
July, torrential rains have caused more than 50 deaths and economic
losses of 8.9 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion), according to the Ministry
of Civil Affairs.