More than 230 people killed by flooding
Print Edition
CHINA will “prepare for the worst and strive for the best,” it said yesterday following the deaths of more than 230 people in floods across the country.
“Although the water levels in middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are slowly dropping, most are still above warning levels,” said Zhang Jiatuan, a spokesman for the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
He said the situation was “still quite critical” as central and eastern parts of China are expected to see a fresh round of heavy rain over the next few days.
More than 1,508 counties across 28 provinces have reported floods, with 237 fatalities and 93 people missing as of Wednesday.
Some 147,200 houses have been destroyed, Zhang said, and over 5.46 million hectares of farmland inundated.
Direct economic losses were some 147 billion yuan (US$22 billion).
So far, central and southeastern parts of China have been worst hit. But as the rainy season continues, “the possibility of flooding in northern rivers can not be ruled out,” Zhang said.
Safeguarding dikes, especially those old and ill-maintained, is a “major yet difficult” task, he added.
Huang Xianlong, a fellow official, said that at one time there were more than 800,000 people working on the dikes.
Regarding the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project built a decade ago to reduce the potential for floods, Huang dismissed reports he said were misleading when they claimed it to be useless or counterproductive.
“In fact, the more critical the situation is, the more obvious and positive the dam exerts its role,” he said.
Meanwhile, authorities are to closely monitor potential typhoons, and address potential hazards.
The latest tropical storm to hit the mainland left 69 people dead and six others missing in southeast China’s Fujian Province.
Super Typhoon Nepartak had weakened into a tropical storm by the time it made landfall on Saturday, but still caused havoc.
By yesterday more than half a million people had been forced to evacuate and some 8,300 homes in the province had been destroyed.
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