China floods death toll climbs
2005-06-23 23:06
Beijing - Heavy rains and mudslides killed dozens of people across China's densely populated southeast, pushing the region's death toll to at least 131 and forcing the evacuation of more than 900 000 from flooding that was the worst in a century in some places, said the government on Thursday.
Xinhua News Agency said meteorologists warned of more "torrential rains" in the south over the next few days.
The government said at least 81 people were killed in the latest rain and landslides across an area stretching from Guangxi on China's southern coast through Guangdong to Fujian province in the southeast.
Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong, was the heart of China's export-oriented manufacturing industries and its most populous province, with more than 100 million people.
Flooding deaths every summer
The latest fatalities raised the death toll in the south to at least 131 and the nationwide toll in China's three-week-old flooding season to at least 248.
China suffered hundreds of flooding deaths every summer in its south and northeast.
The impact of seasonal rains is magnified by environmental damage from decades of intensive farming and tree cutting that have left denuded hillsides unable to trap rain.
Millions of people lived in vulnerable areas on reclaimed former flood plains.
Cheng Dianlong of the government's anti-flood agency said, in parts of Guangxi, the flooding was the worst in a century, while the inundation along the Min River in Fujian was the most severe in two decades.
Water reaching third floor of buildings
Newspaper photos showed soldiers and police rowing boatloads of residents down flooded streets. News reports said floodwaters in some parts of Guangxi reached the third floor of buildings.
Xinhua said in Fujian, a mudslide swept a bus and a car off a highway and into a river on Thursday, near the city of Jian'ou, leaving 23 people missing.
Cheng said, in Guangxi, about 42 000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas of the industrial city of Wuzhou, in case a surging river that flowed through the city overwhelms protective dikes.
He said a total of 570 000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas in Guangxi, while 320 000 were evacuated in Fujian, he said. Xinhua said 25 000 people were relocated in Guangdong.
'Life-threatening danger'
Cheng said authorities were airdropping food and drinking water to 10 000 stranded people, near Wuzhou. He said they weren't in "life-threatening danger".
Xinhua said the director of water resources for Wuzhou was dismissed on Wednesday for failing to "resolutely carry out orders for flood prevention".
Elsewhere in Guangxi, flooding was reported in the popular tourist town of Yangshuo, which attracted thousands of visitors a year to its finger-like limestone peaks.
Nearly 50 deaths were reported earlier in flooding in Fujian.
- SAPA