Heavy rains in China leave at least 65 dead or missing
Pastor Dale Morgan
Heavy rains in China leave at least 65 dead or missing*
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) June 15, 2008
Heavy rains in southern and eastern China have left at least 65 people
dead or missing, while more than one million residents have been
evacuated, state media said Sunday.
Rains were expected to further pound southern China in the coming days,
with rising river levels threatening towns in Jiangxi, Guangxi and
Guangdong provinces, the state meteorological bureau said.
According to the civil affairs ministry and provincial officials, at
least 57 people have been killed and eight are missing following
torrential rains in nine provinces over the past week, Xinhua news
agency said.
More than 1.27 million people have been evacuated in the hardest-hit
regions, with large swathes of farmland submerged and economic losses
already totalling more than 10 billion yuan (1.45 billion dollars), it said.
Almost 18 million people had been affected by flooding while more than
141,000 homes had been wrecked or damaged, the report added.
State television showed people rowing boats in the middle of towns in
flooded areas, while in rural areas farmers frantically filled sand bags
in a bid to stop swollen rivers spilling their waters on to croplands.
The rains have washed away roads across the nine provinces and many
areas have been hit by landslides, Xinhua said.
Prosperous Guangdong province was the worst affected. Rains there left
at least 20 people dead, with flooding in the Pearl River delta the
worst in decades, it added.
The Guangdong government issued an emergency flood alert throughout the
province as levels in tributaries of the Pearl River hit or were
surpassing danger levels, Xinhua said.
The government had dispatched 10 special boats to Changle city, one of
the worst-hit areas in Guangdong, where up to 100,000 people were being
evacuated.
In parts of Guangdong, up to 415 millimetres (16.6 inches) of rain fell
in a 24-hour period from Friday to Saturday, Xinhua said, while the
freakish weather dumped up to 451 millimetres in parts of neighboring
Fujian province.
Food prices, already a main driver of inflation in China, were also
rising due to the flooding, with vegetable prices in some Guangdong
cities up between 30 percent and 70 percent on Saturday alone, it said.
In Guangxi province, which lies west of Guangdong, officials warned of
rock and mudslides in mountainous areas where torrential rain has been
responsible for 14 deaths since last week, Xinhua said in a separate report.
A section of the Xijiang River in Guangxi burst its banks on Sunday
evening, forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 people, Xinhua said,
adding there were no reports of casualties.
By late Saturday, 134 roads had been blocked and 22 bridges damaged in
the province, leading to jams along highways and nearly 1,500 trucks
stranded, it said.