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Floods retreat in south China

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 01:35 CDT

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).

Source: REUTERS

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