Weather forecasters warned yesterday of a fresh onslaught of downpours across southern China, which has already been battered by floods and landslides that have killed nearly 200.
“The south will be hit by a new round of heavy rain today,” the National Meteorological Center warned on its Web site, as state television broadcast images of devastation in some of the worst-affected provinces.
The Chinese civil affairs ministry has said that the downpours and resulting floods and landslides have left 199 people dead and 123 missing.
The weather center said rain was likely to continue for another three days in some areas.
The disaster, which has hit 10 provinces or regions, has caused almost 42 billion yuan (US$6 billion) in estimated economic losses and seen nearly 2.4 million people displaced.
State television showed images of indoor stadiums filled with adults and children forced from their homes and resting on blankets.
Thousands of soldiers have been dispatched to flood-hit areas to help in rescue and evacuation work, the official Xinhua news agency said.
These were also filmed struggling up soaked hills with food supplies to help residents stuck in their villages or carrying rowboats to areas submerged in brown, muddy water.
In the hard-hit province of Jiangxi, authorities have carried out a large-scale evacuation after a dyke breach on the Fu River flooded a large swathe of land including some towns.
Yu Shenghua, a spokesman for Fuzhou city where the dyke is located, told reporters that 95,000 residents had been evacuated so far and that thousands remained to be moved.
According to the national flood control headquarters, 34 rivers in Jiangxi alone had breached their warning marks and three of these triggered the most serious flooding in 50 years.
In neighboring Fujian Province, state television showed images of rain-drenched workers and diggers piling earth on to riverbanks to try to hold back the deluge.
The government has allocated 253 million yuan for rescue and relief efforts and has already sent more than 30,000 tents to affected areas to house the displaced, the civil affairs ministry said.
Alternating floods and droughts have plagued China’s people for millennia.
Large flood-hit areas of southern and southwestern China, particularly Guizhou, Guangxi and Chongqing, had only just recently emerged from a crippling drought that in some regions was the worst in a century.
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