Flood deaths hit 101 with no relief in sight
10/7/2007 16:39
Widespread flooding across several Chinese provinces has killed seven more
people, bringing the recent death toll to 101, a Ministry of Civil Affairs
spokesman said yesterday.
Another 26 people are missing as a result of
torrential rain that began lashing the Huaihe River valley, the eastern area of
Sichuan Province and the southern area of Shaanxi Province on June
28.
Nearly 800,000 people in Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Sichuan,
Chongqing and Shaanxi provinces have been evacuated.
More than 75,500
houses have collapsed and another 295,600 have been damaged since the bad
weather began.
Direct economic losses could reach 6.9 billion yuan
(US$908 million), and agricultural losses are now estimated at 3.7 billion yuan,
the spokesman said.
Heavy rains also triggered mountain torrents,
landslides and mudflows.
Farmers in east China have been warned their
croplands may be inundated in order to prevent the flood-prone Huaihe River from
bursting its banks as continuous rain pushed its waters close to the danger
point. Water levels are expected to reach 29.3 meters, the newly adjusted danger
mark at which sluices are usually opened, by today.
"If that is the
reality, we will have to divert some water," said Qian Min, director of the
Huaihe River Water Resources Committee.
Qian, also deputy head of Huaihe
River Flood Control Headquarters, instructed local authorities to prepare for
possible major flooding.
"The flood control situation is very grave
because the weather forecast says concentrated rainfall will continue in areas
along the Huaihe in the next two days," Qian said.
The Huaihe River, the
third-longest waterway in China, runs between the Yellow River and the Yangtze
River, cutting through Henan Province in central China and east China's Anhui
and Jiangsu provinces before entering the Yangtze via Hongze
Lake.
Meanwhile, 326,000 workers in three affected provinces have been
organized to patrol embankments along both banks of the Huaihe.
East
China's Zhejiang Province has alerted low-lying coastal areas of the approach of
a tropical storm that formed early yesterday in the western
Pacific.
Tropical storm Man-Yi was packing winds of up to 72 kilometers
per hour yesterday, according to the China Central Meteorological
Station.
Man-Yi formed around 2am yesterday east of the Philippines. The
storm will continue to gain strength, moving northwestward, the weather watchers
said.
Xinhua
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