Environment     

Rainstorms cause severe flooding and landslides

China Daily, July 10, 2013

• Rainstorms sweeping across parts of China have affected millions, and Sichuan province has been hit the hardest by severe floods and landslides.

  Police help people walk through the deep water in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Monday. Rainstorms have swept across the province, causing severe flooding and landslides. [Photo/China Daily]

  
  
  

  The train station at Mount Qingcheng, Sichuan, was inundated on Tuesday morning, said Liu Huiying, a tourist from Beijing.

  "The water level was so high that it was up to my knee," she said.

  Rainstorms in Dujiangyan, near Mount Qingcheng, caused flooding in urban and landslides in mountainous areas. An expressway linking Dujiangyan with Chengdu was closed.

  Wan Hong, owner of Hongyuan Inn near Mount Qingcheng, said the rainstorm was the heaviest he had ever seen.

  The storms caused some farmers' houses to collapse and flooded a road from Dujiangyan to Mount Qingcheng.

  "All 24 trains between Mount Qingcheng and Chengdu were cancelled on Tuesday," said Xia Yongjing, an information officer with the Chengdu Railway Bureau.

  Heavy rains flooded the ruins of the old county seat of Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang autonomous county, which was ravaged by the magnitude-8 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. Some 20,000 people died in the quake in Beichuan, which is China's only Qiang autonomous county.

  "It is the biggest rainstorm in 50 years in the county. The deepest water in the ruins is 7 meters. The rainstorm has affected 15 townships and 42,571 people in Beichuan. While the county has evacuated 2,019 residents as a precaution, one person is missing, many roads and bridges have been damaged, and power and telecommunication facilities have been cut off. Direct economic losses have surpassed 88 million yuan ($14 million)," said Wang Shoulei, an information officer in Beichuan.

  Floods affected 16,900 people in Ya'an, with direct economic losses estimated at 768 million yuan. The pandas at the Bifengxia base of the Wolong Nature Reserve in Ya'an were safe.

   

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