Relief workers yesterday battled to deliver aid to millions affected by Asia's devastating floods, as monsoon rains and storms continued to wreak havoc across the region.
While tropical storm Vongfong skirted Vietnam, giving disaster response teams breathing space to reach flooded regions, it dumped fresh rain on China, where an estimated 900 people have died in floods this summer.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Flood waters from both countries were also moving south towards Cambodia's Mekong Delta, threatening surrounding crops and villages, officials in Phnom Penh said.
Chinese officials said the massive Dongting Lake, a buffer for the mighty Yangtze River, had surged above danger levels and could pose a threat to vast tracts of farmland and some 10 million people living around it.
Chinese officials said there that if the lake were to breach its banks, areas around it could be hit by massive floods comparable to those of 1998 that left some 4,000 people dead.
"The lake is above warning marks in a number of places," an official from the Hunan Anti-Flood Bureau headquarters in the provincial capital of Changsha said.
Up to 40,000 officials and workers have been sent to fortify embankments around the 2,800km2 lake.
Water levels in the traditional danger spot of Chenglingji, where the Yangtze exits the lake, were already above warning marks yesterday.
At 8am the waters were almost 1.5m above the 32m flood-warning marks, said an official at the anti-flood bureau of nearby Changde city.
The China Daily estimated that more than 10 million people and some 667,000 hectares of farmland around the lake were under threat.
The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in Yunnan Province meanwhile has hit 231, state media said. It said some 21 million people have been affected in the province.
Meteorologists warned that Vongfong, which hit Guangdong Province on Monday, was expected to dump additional rain over Hunan Province as it moves across the country.
In Vietnam, disaster response teams yesterday cleared roads to allow vehicles to reach flooded regions after Vongfong spared the country.
Twenty-seven people died in flash floods in the mountainous north in four days of flooding that swept away houses, bridges and roads and triggered landslides.
Most of the deaths were in the north-central province of Ha Giang, bordering China.
Officials said so far more than 800 people have been killed in flooding and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains in South Asia.
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