AFP: At least 66 feared dead in China rains as flood threatens six million

Monday, 19-May-2003 3:30AM

Story from AFP / Peter Harmsen

BEIJING, May 19 (AFP) - At least 66 people were feared dead Monday from torrential rains in south China, while a flood crest was moving slowly down a major river towards Changsha, an industrial city of six million.

The looming disasters in large parts of the mainland forced Premier Wen Jiabao to issue a statement warning that anti-flood defense should not be forgotten in the heat of the battle against SARS.

Twenty-eight people were confirmed killed and more than 10 were missing in southern Hunan province after sustained rainfall triggered massive mountain floods, a local anti-flood official told AFP.

The rain had also caused a flood crest, which was moving along the Xiang river and was gradually forcing water levels in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, to reach danger levels, said the official.

As of early Monday afternoon, the level of the Xiang at Changsha had reached 37.8 meters (126 feet), 2.8 meters above the warning line, said the official, who gave his surname as Lu.

Officials have voiced concern that the level may touch 38.7 meters or even higher before the flood crest has passed.

Rainfall of about 100 millimeters (four inches) has hit parts of Hunan over the past week, causing the worst floods in the Xiang basin in a decade, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Altogether more than 1.2 million people in 19 different counties throughout Hunan have been affected by the flooding to various degrees, according to the state-controlled China Daily.

In Linwu county, eight people were killed after a levee burst causing a mining camp to be inundated, the China News Service said in a separate report.

Hunan, which accounts for 13 percent of China's total rice output, is facing a threat not just from the Xiang river, but also from the Yangtze river, which enters the province from the north.

Chinese officials recently warned of huge floods along the Yangtze River this summer, caused by massive rainfall.

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In neighboring Guangdong province, floods and landslides claimed 20 lives and left seven missing, local officials told AFP by telephone.

With 14 dead, Meizhou city was the worst hit part of Guangdong, an official surnamed Deng said.

In the city of Heyuan, five were confirmed dead, and in Shaoguan city one fatality had been confirmed, local officials said.

In the southeastern province of Fujian, at least one person was killed in flood-related accidents, a local official said.

Premier Wen said that officials at all levels should pay attention to flood control in order to make sure people were safe and the economy operated smoothly, Xinhua reported.

This task should be kept in mind "even as the country was fighting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)", Wen said according to Xinhua.

Last year, more than 1,500 people were washed away in floods and flood-related disasters across China, according to official estimates.

Paradoxically, while floods and torrential rains were wreaking havoc in the south, millions of farmers in northern China were facing the opposite problem.

Water volume in the Yellow River, which passes through eight provinces, was expected to fall to lows not seen since the communist state was established in 1949.

This will cause agricultural output in the region to suffer a sharp decline, the paper warned.

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