China flood death toll nears 1,000

WN

Beijing, 29 July 2010: China’s worst flooding in more than a decade has killed nearly 1,000 people across the country and stranded tens of thousands in the northeast without power. The state-run flood control office said 928 people have been killed since the rainy season began in May and 477 others are missing. More heavy rains were expected for the southeast, southwest and northeast parts of the country through Thursday.

 

About 30,000 residents in Kouqian town were trapped in their homes after torrential rains drenched the northeastern province of Jilin on Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Water began flooding the town after the nearby Xingshan Reservoir and the Wende and Songhua rivers overflowed.

 

 

Rescuers were delivering supplies by boat and moving people to higher ground. Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan, reporting from Beijing, said there seemed to be no imminent danger to Kouqian residents’ lives. "People have been going to the second or third floors of their houses," she said. "You will get damages of course but ... it looks like rescue workers have most definitely been on top of things." 

 

Reservoirs filling up

 

Chan said more than a thousand people are killed annually in China floods but that the current situation was worrisome because of unusually heavy rains. "The worry this year has been on the dams and the reservoirs ... This year it’s been so much extra rainfall, about 15 per cent more than usual. "That complicates the situation because the reservoirs are getting full and the dams are nearing their maximum capacity."

 

Flooding has hit areas all over China. A total of 875,000 homes have collapsed and almost 10 million people have been evacuated, according to Xinhua. The Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, has reached 90 per cent of its full capacity. Thousands of workers have sandbagged riverbanks and checked reservoirs in preparation for potential floods expected to flow from the swollen Yangtze and Han rivers, an official with the Yangtze Water Resources Commission, said.

 

"Right now, the Han river in Hubei province is on the verge breaching warning levels," the official, who gave his name as Zhang, said. The Han is expected to rise this week to its highest level in two decades. Workers were prepared to blast holes in the river’s embankment to divert flood waters into a low-lying area of farms and fish ponds, Xinhua said.