Nearly 900,000 people have been evacuated from two regions of southern China where at least 46 have died in flooding that was the worst in a century for some areas, the government said yesterday.
An additional 26 people were missing and some 10,000 stranded by rising floodwaters in the mountainous Guangxi region on China's southern coast and Fujian Province, the National Flood Prevention and Anti-Drought Headquarters announced.
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, a spokesman for the flood agency, Cheng Dianlong, said on the state television midday news.
PHOTO: AP
China suffers 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.
flood plains
Millions of people live in vulnerable areas on reclaimed former flood plains.
In Guangxi, some 42,000 people have been evacuated from low-lying areas of the industrial city of Wuzhou in case a surging river that flows through the city overwhelms protective dikes, said Cheng.
A total of 570,000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas in Guangxi, while 320,000 were evacuated in Fujian, Cheng said.
Authorities were air-dropping food and drinking water to 10,000 stranded people near Wuzhou, Cheng said. He said they weren't in "life-threatening danger."
The director of water resources for Wuzhou was dismissed Wednesday for failing to "resolutely carry out orders for flood prevention," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Photos in newspapers showed soldiers and police rowing boatloads of residents down flooded streets.
Elsewhere in Guangxi, flooding was reported in the popular tourist town of Yangshuo, which attracts thousands of visitors a year to its finger-like limestone peaks.
death toll
The deaths reported yesterday raised to more than 180 the total number of fatalities in China's three-week-old summer flood season.
Elsewhere, nearly 50 deaths were reported earlier in flooding in Fujian Province.
In the northeast, some 117 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed when floodwaters destroyed a village schoolhouse in Heilongjiang Province.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS