Posted on 06/26/2002 11:04:31 AM PDT by tallhappy
The Advertiser
June 26, 2002, Wednesday
HEADLINE: Flood toll rises
BEIJING: The official death toll in floods which have devastated large areas of China has risen to more than 750. More than 57 million people have been affected, with up to 800,000 homes destroyed.
At least 543 die in China floods
Beijing, June 26. (Reuters): Heavy flooding in China has killed at least 543 people this month and the toll is likely to jump when the summer flood season peaks in July and August, the China Daily reported today.
Nearly 300 people were missing in just three of the hardest hit regions -- Shaanxi, Sichuan and the municipality of Chongqing -- an aid group said yesterday. The number nationwide was unknown.
Accounts varied as to how many people were affected by floods that threaten to rival the deluges of 1998, which killed more than 4,000 people. It was not clear if the government figure counted any of the missing as dead.
In addition, 26 miners in the northern province of Hebei were killed when flash floods swamped at least two coal mines, the official Xinhua news agency reported today. Sixteen people were still trapped in one mine, it said.
Despite the high death toll, experts have said flooding so far this year was not bad as when the worst floods in half a century ravaged the country four years ago.
Torrential rains have hammered several of China's 19 provinces and regions, swamping some five million hectares of farmland and affecting 70 million people, the China Daily said.
Weather forecasts today predicted steady rainfall across most of the country in the coming days, including many of the waterlogged areas already reeling after weeks of rain.
The Shanghai Daily estimated that some 40,000 local households would suffer from this year's rainy season, especially in the older western part of the city.
That is as much a story as the deaths and floods themselves (in its' own way).
I feel bad for those people over there stuck living in a delta area and can't get out.
Thanks, I got the area now. Let me correct myself before tallhappy jumps all over me. It is not a delta area. However, Chongquing is known as the land of a thousand rivers.
china=no free press
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