Non-stop rain takes its toll in flood-hit south China
Pastor Dale Morgan
Non-stop rain takes its toll in flood-hit south China*
GUANGZHOU, China, June 27 (AFP) Jun 27, 2008
Mrs. Li looked up to the sky with resignation as rain poured down
outside her shop in the southern city of Guangzhou, after a tropical
storm passed through and drenched the population.
"It's been raining almost continuously for about two months, much longer
than last year, and it's a lot of trouble," she said as shopkeepers
around her swept water away from their stores.
Mrs. Li, who would not give her full name, is not the only one in
Guangzhou fed up with nearly two months of almost non-stop rain.
Inhabitants of the capital of Guangdong province -- used to bad weather
at this time of year -- say they have had enough of the freak downpours
that have caused deadly floods in nearby towns and hit business.
A shopkeeper selling drinks and snacks next to a big clothing centre in
the city said trade had been worse than usual because of the weather.
"There are fewer people that come because of the rain, and it has had an
impact on business here," she said.
"I really can't take it anymore."
They are the lucky ones, however, as the city was largely spared from
the deadly floods that hit other towns in Guangdong this month.
Foshan, for example, just 20 kilometres away from Guangzhou, was
inundated when the Xijiang river burst its banks.
Around 51 people were killed or went missing in flood-related incidents
in the space of 12 days in Guangdong as well as the neighbouring
provinces and regions of Guangxi, Jiangxi and Hunan.
But the amount of rain, and the length of time the downpours have
lasted, have taken their toll on locals here.
"It's definitely worse than last year," a restaurant owner in downtown
Guangzhou said.
"In May, for example, I remember it rained 20 days straight."
The tropical storm that hit the city on Wednesday -- the remainder of a
typhoon that killed more than 1,000 people in the Philippines -- sent
yet more sheets of rain and caused chaos in the city.
It forced the evacuation of more than 600 people from the southern
district of Nansha, the Guangzhou Daily said Thursday, as landslides
were reported in 14 different places and traffic slowed to a snail's pace
One more was killed in central Haizhu district when a board hanging
outside on a street fell and hit the person, the paper said.
On Thursday, the rain had subsided from its tropical storm force, but
was still pouring down on a sea of umbrellas in the city.
The bad weather could continue until the beginning of next week, the
newspaper reported.
Cab driver Wu Dongping said the rain had also hit food prices.
"The rain has impacted us in that the vegetables we eat are very
expensive, because a lot were flooded by the sheer amount of water
recently," he said.
But it is not just in the past two months that bad weather has had a
negative effect on the city.
In January and February, hundreds of thousands of people were unable to
leave Guangzhou and go home for Chinese New Year because severe
blizzards in other parts of the country brought transport to a stand-still.
The railway station was besieged by a huge crowd of people -- many of
them migrant workers for whom this was the only time in the year they
were able to see their families -- causing the death of one woman in a
stampede.
This year has been bad for China as a whole, with extreme weather in
January, riots in Tibet in March that led to a government crackdown, the
devastating earthquake in southwest Sichuan province in May, and recent
floods in the south and east of the country.
"Apart from Tibet, all were natural disasters that we just couldn't
avoid," Wu said.