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Latest reports confirm at least 55 people have been killed and a further 12 are missing since powerful storms started to lash southern China at the end of May.

 

Southern provinces including Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Chongqing have been beset by floods and landslides. Such has been the extent of the weather and subsequent damage that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes.

 

"At least 378,000 people have been evacuated and relocated because of the heavy rain," said Li Baojun, an official in charge of disaster relief with the Ministry of Civil Affairs in a phone interview.

 

Fujian Province in east China has been hardest hit with 28 deaths reported since the end of May, he added. Two other provinces, Guangdong and Guizhou, have reported 11 fatalities each.

 

The continuous rain has caused the worst flooding of the past two decades on the Minjiang River in Fujian Province. It has led to estimated economic losses of 2.19 billion yuan (US$274 million) in the province and affected more than 1.6 million people.

 

Storms will continue to batter the regions because cold and warm air currents will continue to meet, the Central Meteorological Office warned yesterday. The Fujian Provincial Meteorological Station has issued the highest warning possible for the coming days.

 

It said the storms would continue for at least 48 hours with some parts of the province receiving as much as 100 millimeters of rainfall every 24 hours.

 

Train and air services were both disrupted by the weather. Six trains on the Yingtan-Xiamen Railway between Jiangxi and Fujian provinces were forced to stop in the morning after the track collapsed in several places due to the rain.

 

The Nanchang Railway Bureau, which runs the route, sent several thousand workers to repair the damage. The line was expected to reopen by 8 PM last night.

 

(China Daily June 8, 2006)