Major floods possible, said flood control authority

Flooding this year has resulted in direct economic losses of more than 22.9 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) and left 47 dead and another 10 missing, flood control authorities said today.

Zhang Jiatuan, spokesman for the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, also said in a news conference in Beijing that 982,100 hectares of crops and more than 14.9 million people have been affected since the flood season began in China. More than 1.3 million of those affected were evacuated.

Compared with the average causalities and losses for the same period since 2010, causalities this year went down by 84 percent and the area of affected crops decreased by 62 percent, he said.

Generally, the flood situation this year is bad with "extremely uneven distribution of rainfall" and "high frequencies of extreme weather" and there might be major floods on the Zhujiang River, Taihu Lake and the Huaihe River, said Zhang.

The headquarters asked flood control officials to be on alert 24 hours a day beginning March 1, which is one month earlier than previous years, and the central government has allocated 812 million yuan in special funds for flood control and drought relief this year, he said.