Since late May 170 people have died and 1.6 million have been forced to flee their homes following rainstorms in south and southwest China, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday.

The latest disaster occurred on Tuesday morning when mud and rock flattened a petrol station in Xingyi, Guizhou Province, killing two people and injuring two others, Guizhou Metropolis Newspaper reported yesterday.

 

From June 1 continuous heavy rains have caused serious flooding in Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Chongqing, said Li Baojun, a ministry official in charge of disaster relief.

 

Fujian and Guizhou have suffered the most with 98 people killed and more than 20 still missing, Li said.

 

 

In south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region two rainstorms in the past three weeks have killed 21 people and affected the lives of more than 4.6 million others, a regional civil affairs spokesman said.

 

The two rainstorms hit 71 counties around Wuzhou and Baise between June 7-10 and June 13-15, causing mud-rock flows, landslides and mountain torrents, he said. Around 195,500 people have been evacuated from their homes.

 

The regional civil affairs department has sent five rescue teams to nine cities to help locals reconstruct their homes, he said.

 

The central government has allotted 21 million yuan (US$2.6 million) in relief funds, which will be distributed among disaster-hit cities?including Wuzhou and Guilin, the spokesman said.

 

By mid-June, the central government had earmarked 116 million yuan (US$14.5 million) in emergency funding for flood victims in south China, statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs show.

 

The disaster-affected area was larger and the damage heavier than last year, Li said, adding that such events have led to 15 billion yuan (US$1.85 billion) of economic losses so far this year.

 

 

In related news, regions in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River entered the annual rainy season yesterday. Intermittent drizzle will linger in these areas for about a month, according to Shen Shuqin, a chief weather forecaster at Jiangsu Meteorological Station.

 

Provinces along the Yangtze River should implement grass-roots preparation measures to fight against floods as the river basin has to take the additional water of the rainy season, warned Wei Shanzhong, an official in charge of flood control along the river.

 

Despite the rain, meteorologists are worried about a possible drought. Statistics indicate that rainfall in Jiangsu Province since June has been nearly 40 percent below average and this has led to many rivers in the province drying up.

 

(China Daily June 22, 2006)