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Floods: 600 000 homeless
11/06/2007 09:37 - (SA)
Beijing - At least 66 people have been killed in flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains in China and nearly 600 000 have been left homeless, a state news agency reported on Monday.
The highest death toll in the rains, which started Thursday, was in crowded Guangdong province in the southeast, where 18 people were killed and four were missing, the Xinhua News Agency.
More than 72 000 people were evacuated from their homes in Guangdong, Xinhua said.
The province is the heart of China's export-driven light manufacturing industries, but there was no word of any damage to factories or shipping facilities.
Deaths and damage were reported in areas throughout southern China and the northwest. Over the last five days torrential rains, mudslides and floods also hit Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces where at least 48 people died, Xinhua said.
China suffers deaths and damage every summer when seasonal rains cause flash floods.
Big cities are sheltered by giant dikes but fatalities are reported in farm communities that lack protection from rising rivers, and in mountain towns that are hit by flash floods.
Millions of people in central and southern China live on flood-prone reclaimed farmland in the flood plains of rivers.
Flooding and typhoons killed 2 704 people last year, according to the China Meteorological Administration. That was the second-deadliest year on record after 1998, when summer flooding claimed 4 150 lives.
- AP
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