Floods retreat in south China

BEIJING (Reuters) – Floods fed by torrential rains were
retreating in south China on Tuesday after claiming at least
188 lives, officials said, as people coped with water
shortages, ruined roads and other damage.

The downpours were brought by Tropical Storm Bilis, which
killed dozens in the Philippines and Taiwan before striking
heavily populated southern China on Friday.

Rain was still forecast for the worst-hit provinces of
Hunan and Guangdong over the next two days, but officials and
residents there reached by telephone on Tuesday reported only
intermittent drizzle and even sunshine.

In the far-southern province of Guangdong, where at least
44 were killed, the government was distributing clean water in
Shaoguan, a city of half a million that was flooded.

“To restore power supply is easier, but it really takes
time to get the taps running again,” a disaster relief official
there told Reuters by telephone.

About 8,800 passengers had been stranded for more than 40
hours after the Beijing-Guangzhou railway was cut by floods and
landslides near Shaoguan, Xinhua news agency said. Trains
resumed on Tuesday.

In nearby Lechang, a prison was besieged by flood waters
and more than 1,600 inmates and 220 guards struggled without
fresh food and drinking water for three days before helicopters
airdropped supplies on Monday, Xinhua said.

Vice Premier Hui Liangyu flew to neighboring Hunan province
on Monday, where 92 were confirmed dead and more than 100 were
missing, a local official said by telephone.

State television showed footage of soldiers evacuating
villagers stranded on the roofs of their homes in Hunan.

“The biggest problem now is drinking water. Many wells in
the countryside were flooded,” an official surnamed Huang in
Leiyang, one of Hunan’s worst-hit areas, told Reuters by
telephone. “And it is very hot today. There is an epidemic
threat.”

The rains also claimed 43 lives in the southeastern coastal
province of Fujian, where Bilis made landfall in China, and
nine in the southwestern region of Guangxi.

South China is plagued by rainstorms every summer, but this
year’s flood season has been particularly deadly, already
claiming hundreds of lives before Bilis struck.

Some 2.2 million were evacuated because of Bilis, the
Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Direct economic losses from the storm totaled 12 billion
yuan ($1.5 billion) after 160,000 hectares of crops and 113,000
houses were destroyed, the Ministry said on its Web site
(www.mca.gov.cn).