China reported more casualties on Sunday as rescuers retrieved
the bodies of people missing in floods and mud-rock flows triggered
by heavy rains in recent days in many parts of the country.
Rescuers retrieved two more bodies Sunday at the Xiaojiangping
Dam near the Sujiahekou Hydropower Station in Tengchong county,
Yunnan Province, bringing the death toll from the mud-rock flow
early Thursday to 29.
The two dead, a man and a woman, have been identified to be
workers from Chongqing Municipality.
The mud-rock flow triggered by continuous rains swept through
three tents where 74 construction workers lived. Thirty-five
managed to escape and ten were injured.
Also in Tengchong county, four villagers died and three were
injured in a landslide that occurred Saturday morning in a mining
area near Xinqi village when they were clearing the mud debris at
the mine so as to carry out illegal mining, confirmed the Tengchong
county government.
In a separate accident, armed police and divers have salvaged
six bodies of the workers at the Shashapo hydropower station in
Daguan county, Yunnan. They are still searching for the last
missing one.
A flood hit the station under construction around 2:40 p.m.
Thursday, leaving seven people working at the site missing. The
seven were from a hydropower construction company in Sichuan
Province.
In flood-ravaged Lincang City, seven people have been confirmed
dead and ten others injured. More than 227,000 residents in eight
counties were affected in continuous rainfall, which incurred 300
million yuan (US$40 million) in economic loses.
Floods also plagued other regions like Yingjiang county and
Pu'er city, leaving at least three dead, eight missing and 117,000
people affected.
The Yunnan Provincial Civil Affairs Department said 163 people
have been killed and eight missing since late May from lightning
strikes, floods and mud-rock flows. More than five million people
were affected.
More than 18,600 residents were evacuated and 321,000 hectares
of farmland were damaged in the wake of heavy rains and floods,
which incurred over 2 billion yuan (264 million U.S. dollars) in
economic loses.
In central China's Hubei Province, the seventh rainstorm to hit
the province between Tuesday and Saturday since June 18 left two
dead and two missing.
The seven rainstorms affected 13 million people in the province.
Working teams from the provincial government have rushed to the
affected areas to coordinate disaster-relief work.
In east China's Anhui Province, hundreds of thousands of people
are working to prevent the long soaked dykes of swelling Huaihe
river from being breached. The river is seeing the second biggest
floodwater this summer since 1954.
More than one million people have been evacuated in Henan, Anhui
and Jiangsu provinces from the projected path of floodwater from
the Huaihe River. There is no report of death from the Huaihe River
flood.
By July 16, China's death toll from natural disasters was 715
with 129 people missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on
Thursday.
The figures showed 200 million people were affected by natural
disasters, including floods, landslides, droughts, gales,
snowstorms and earthquakes, while 4.45 million people were forced
to leave their homes. ?
(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2007)
