Millions affected by deadly floods

More than 170 people died and scores remained missing after heavy rains touched off floods and landslides in China last week, officials said yesterday.

State-run media put the economic losses at more than US$2 billion (NZ$2.86B), and meteorologists warned that more thunderstorms were expected.

In northern China, where most of the deaths were concentrated, the worst-hit area was Hebei province, which encircles the capital, Beijing. At least 114 people died there, the provincial branch of the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. An additional 111 people were still missing in Hebei as of Saturday.

Authorities put the number of affected people in Hebei alone at more than 9 million, with nearly 300,000 evacuated.

In the city of Xingtai, about 300 kilometres southwest of Beijing, at least 25 people were dead and 13 were missing after the Qili River overflowed its banks on Thursday, flooding homes as people slept.

Photographs and videos circulating online appeared to show residents retrieving the bodies of dead children from the floodwaters, but it was impossible to verify the authenticity of the postings.

The Beijing News reported that the dead and missing included five children ranging in age from 3 to 10, as well as an 86-year-old man.

Some residents suggested the disaster in Xingtai might have been man-made, resulting from the release of floodwaters from a nearby reservoir.

The mayor of Xingtai, Dong Xiaoyu, held a news conference and apologised for the failure of city officials to adequately protect residents from the floods.

But at a news conference yesterday, officials denied that the disaster was caused by the intentional release of water from the nearby reservoir, saying the reservoir’s floodgate does not open into the river that flooded, but into a different waterway.

The vice mayor of Xingtai said that the week’s downpours were the heaviest since August 1996.

Water brimmed over the reservoir into the Qili River and also flowed into the western channel of the South-north Water Transfer Project, a massive engineering effort designed to move water to China’s arid north from the more lush southern provinces.

The water in the transfer-way also ended up in the Qili River, causing the deadly floods, officials said.

The problem was exacerbated because the Qili narrows in one place near a major highway, they added.

Across the country, army troops were dispatched to rescue people stranded in flooded areas and deliver emergency aid by helicopter. The flooding has inundated farmlands, wiping out US$2.4 billion worth of crops, the news agency said. In the metropolis of Shijiazhuang, near Xingtai, thousands of residents have been without running water.