Weather wreaks a dreadful toll

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-6-24  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE death toll from rain, lightning, hail, floods and landslides has risen to 35 in China's southwestern Yunnan Province, according to the provincial civil affairs bureau.

Nearly 1.9 million people from 14 of the 16 cities and prefectures in the province have been affected. Two were missing and six were injured, the bureau said yesterday.

The natural disasters that damaged 1,620 houses, ruined 8,200 hectares of crops and forced the evacuation of 5,440 people inflicted losses of 575 million yuan (US$82 million), local authorities said.

In the eastern province of Anhui, torrential rain and flooding during the weekend affected about 541,000 people and caused losses of 135 million yuan.

Continuous downpours have lashed 12 southern provincial-level regions since June 7. Some of these regions have been hit by the heaviest rain in more than a century.

Due to the continuous rain in sweltering Shanghai, heavy fog stopped shipping movements on the Yangtze River estuary yesterday. The fog cloaked most of the Shanghai port early in the morning, decreasing visibility to less than 100 meters, a local port official said.

More than 120 ship movements were canceled, affecting 19 overseas container vessels, according to Wusong Entry-Exit Frontier Inspection Station.

"Fengshen," which weakened to a tropical storm from a typhoon, continued to head northwest. It is expected to bring more rain to the southern and eastern provinces.

Water in Lake Taihu, in the Yangtze Delta plain on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, was 0.33 meters above the warning level of 3.5 meters, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

Taihu is China's third-largest freshwater lake, covering 2,400 square kilometers.