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.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other