China bracing for more floods
2005-06-24 21:17
Beijing - China braced for the start of the rainy season along the flood-prone Yangtze River on Friday as the death toll from torrential downpours this year jumped to 567 with at least 165 more missing.
Although the relentless rains in southern parts of the country were expected to ease, water levels on the Pearl River remained at record highs as they surged toward the regional capital of Guangzhou, flood control officials said.
Guangdong provincial governor Huang Huahua urged the government to fast-track relief efforts throughout the province, including Guangzhou, which was experiencing the worst rains in 90 years.
Across the border from Guangdong, heavy rains pounded Hong Kong, bringing flooding and landslides as well as traffic gridlock. Flights were delayed and ferry services cancelled while primary schools suspended classes.
Major flooding across China this year has so far wreaked economic losses valued at 22.9 billion yuan (US$2.76bn), with more than 44 million people affected, the civic affairs ministry's flood headquarters said.
At least 2.45 million people have been evacuated.
"From the overall situation, the losses brought on this year by flood disasters is on the same level as what we experienced in the 1990s, but still lighter than the big disaster years of 1991 and 1998," the ministry said.
In some of the worst flooding in recent memory, 4 100 people were killed mostly along the Yangtze in 1998 when torrential rains triggered huge landslides while reservoirs and dykes overflowed.
A rain belt that has hovered over most of the Guangxi region east to the coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang since June 16 has sparked widespread havoc.
Farmland and cities are submerged while residents grab what possessions they can and flee for their lives.
Thousands of workers were enlisted to repair rail lines covered by landslides in Guangdong and Fujian, while reservoirs and dykes along Guangxi's Xijiang river - a tributary of the Pearl River - were near bursting point.
In the Longmen region of Guangdong, one of the worst hit areas, up to 760mm of rain fell in a 69-hour period, while other areas experienced up to 400mm through the week, the ministry said.
So far in Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian 111 were confirmed dead and 68 missing on Wednesday.
Sixteen passengers remained missing after their bus was swept off a Fujian road and into the turbulent Min River on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.
Rescue teams found the bus on Friday and pulled it from the river only to find seven bodies on board. The driver and one passenger escaped alive.
In the eastern province of Anhui, a storm of hail of the size of table-tennis balls killed nearly 20 000 chickens, Xinhua said.
While most of drought-plagued northern China continued to swelter with temperatures reaching 40° Celsius, heavy downpours hit the northeast province of Jilin, where more than 300 000 people were affected and four died trying to cross rivers.
Reinforcing dykes
While a let up in the rain is forecast in most southern areas by Saturday, seasonal storms are expected to kick in along the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in central China.
They normally trigger widespread flooding, with experts preparing for the worst.
"According to past experience, at the end of June the rain belt moves northward toward the Yangtze River, but this year from what we have seen it is late and the rain belt has remained over Guangxi and Guangdong," a researcher surnamed Zhang at the National Climate Centre told AFP.
Dykes along Dongting Lake, one of China's largest fresh water lakes and situated along the Yangtze in Hubei province, were being reinforced and inspected by flood prevention teams, the People's Daily reported.
Large urban centres such as Shanghai and Wuhan were also bracing for floods.
- AFP