Death toll rises as flooding causes chaos
Print Edition
SEVERE flooding across south China forced the world’s largest power plant to cut capacity yesterday, delayed grain on barges and damaged farms along the Yangtze River, as the death toll rose to 56 and economic costs hit almost US$4 billion.
Heavy rainfall, mudslides and hail caused by the annual rainy season have also left 22 people missing across 11 provinces and regions as of yesterday morning, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
More than 750,000 hectares of crops have been damaged and direct economic losses totaled more than 25.3 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion), the ministry said.
The government said it had disbursed 700 million yuan in emergency aid to four flood-hit provinces — Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou.
Rain in the southern provinces is expected to ease in the coming days, but weather forecasters predict downpours will move to the southwestern province of Sichuan.
In what analysts said was a move unprecedented in its scale, the Three Gorges and Gezhouba, two of China’s top hydropower plants, closed as much as two thirds of their capacity to avert flooding further downstream on the Yangtze, according to Xinhua news agency.
The annual rainy season, which arrived in the second half of June, has hit southern Hunan Province, one of the country’s largest hog and freshwater fish producers, the most.
High water levels on the Yangtze, Asia’s longest river, also slowed barges carrying grain from northern ports to the south, spurring a rise in freight rates and physical corn prices in some regions, analysts and corn buyers said.
Zhang Yi, a purchase manager at a feed producer in Hunan, said he had three ships carrying about 5,000 tons of corn stuck on waterways near the port of Changsha, the capital of Hunan, since Friday.
Spot corn prices at major ports along the Yangtze and its tributaries, have risen by 30 yuan to 1,800 yuan a ton since last week, according to the China National Grain and Oils Information Center, a government think tank.
China usually transports corn from northern regions to the ports in the south. Then the grain is shipped along the Yangtze and its branches, to central and western provinces.
The Yangtze’s large watershed also accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s freshwater fish output.
Cao Delian, manager of the Dabeinong Changlin fish farm, estimates he has lost a third of his carp due to the deluge.
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