China death-floods worst this century
The death toll in torrential flooding in a mountainous region of southern China has risen to 32, while more than 300,000 people were evacuated following the worst flooding to hit the area in a century, news reports said today.
Heavy rains have pounded the Guangxi region since Saturday, causing rivers to swell to record-high levels and threatening dikes protecting the industrial city of Wuzhou, the China Daily newspaper and the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The deaths in Guangxi raised to more than 180 the total number of fatalities reported in China’s three-week-old summer flood season.
Photos in newspapers showed soldiers and police rowing boatloads of residents down flooded streets.
Guangxi, on China’s southern coast northwest of Hong Kong, is one of the country’s poorest areas.
The flooding was the worst to strik the region in 100 years, and water levels in some areas reached the third floor of buildings, news reports said.
A total of some 333,000 people were evacuated from flood-prone areas, including 20,000 people who left parts of Wuzhou in case dikes protecting the city from the Wuzhou River fail, Xinhua said.
The river was 28 feet above its danger level at midday yesterday, Xinhua said.
Along the river, thousands of people were piling up bags of earth to fortify its banks, China Central Television said.
Flooding also was reported in the popular tourist town of Yangshuo, which attracts thousands of visitors a year to its finger-like limestone peaks, Xinhua said.
Elsewhere, nearly 50 deaths were reported earlier in flooding in the south-eastern province of Fujian. In China’s northeast, some 117 people, most of them schoolchildren, were killed when floodwaters destroyed a village schoolhouse in Heilongjiang province.
| Related Stories: |
|
