The death toll from rainstorms in east China's Shandong Province had risen to 40 by Friday, the provincial civil affairs bureau announced Saturday.

Nine remained missing after the torrential rains started to hit the province on Wednesday and 197 were injured. The previous death toll was 32 by Thursday, bureau officials said.

About 559,200 people were affected, of whom 112,600 were evacuated.

Jinan, Shandong's capital and the worst-hit city, received up to 118 mm of precipitation in an hour during Wednesday's rainstorm.

Officials with the Shandong Department of Water Resources said the rainstorm was the worst since 1916 when Jinan began to collect hydrologic data.

The water level was 23.58 meters in the Huangtaiqiao hydrologic station of Jinan at 8:24 PM on Wednesday, 1.04 meters above the danger line.

Thirty-four people died in the city in collapsed buildings and submerged vehicles, or by electrocution.

The rainstorm, the worst this year to hit Shandong, also disrupted traffic and electricity and water supply for three hours.

Thirteen large and medium-sized reservoirs in the province have seen their water levels surpass the danger line by 8 AM Saturday and six of them had to open sluice to discharge flood water.

All the large and medium-sized reservoirs in Shandong have stored 3 billion cubic meters of water on Saturday, 900 million cubic meters more than the normal level, as it rained continuously since Wednesday.

The Shandong provincial government has allocated 10 million yuan (US$1.3 million) in disaster relief funds to Jinan and delivered 3,000 quilts.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2007)