Society

Worst floods in a decade trap 30,000 in Jilin

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-07-29 07:44

Floods caused by heavy rains in northeastern China stranded tens of thousands of residents without power Wednesday, as the worst flooding in more than a decade continued to besiege many areas of the country.

Rescue workers help local residents evacuate from their flooded hometown in Jilin city, northeast China's Jilin province, Wednesday, July 28, 2010. [China Daily]

Floods this year have killed at least 928 people with 477 missing and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, the State Flood Control and Drought Prevention office reported. More heavy rains were expected for the southeast, southwest and northeast parts of the country through Thursday.

Related readings: Chemical barrels washed into river Floods kill 928, cost US$26 billion in China by July 28 C.China braces for more floods of Yangtze River China Combats Floods

About 30,000 residents in Kouqian town were trapped in their homes after torrential rains drenched the northeastern province of Jilin on Wednesday. Water began flooding the town after the nearby Xingshan Reservoir and the Wende and Songhua rivers overflowed and rescue crews were delivering supplies by boat and moving people to higher ground, state television reported.

Flooding has hit areas all over China. Thousands of workers sandbagged riverbanks and checked reservoirs in preparation for potential floods expected to flow from the swollen Yangtze and Hanhe rivers, an official with the Yangtze Water Resources Commission said Wednesday.

"Right now, the Hanhe river in Hubei province is on the verge breaching warning levels," Zhang said.

The Hanhe is expected to rise this week to its highest level in two decades, Xinhua reported. The flood threat was greater than usual because the Yangtze, into which the Hanhe flows, was also reaching peak levels, it said.

Workers were prepared to blast holes in the Hanhe embankment to divert flood waters into a low-lying area of farms and fish ponds, from which more than 5,000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said.

Although China experiences heavy rains every summer, flooding this year is the worst in more than a decade because the flood-prone Yangtze River Basin has seen 15 percent more rain than in an average year, Duan Yihong, director of the National Meteorological Center, said in a transcript of an interview Wednesday posted on the Xinhua website.

"Rains should begin to slow down in August, but it is hard to predict now what exactly will happen, said Duan. "We have to be vigilant and closely monitor the weather ... do a better job of forecasting."

Thousands of rescuers in central China's Henan province searched for survivors Wednesday after a bridge collapsed from heaving flooding in the Yi River over the weekend, killing 37 people with 29 missing.

Floods have also put the Three Gorges Dam to test. On Wednesday morning, the dam's water flow reached 1.96 million cubic feet (56,000 cubic meters) per second, the biggest peak flow this year, with the water level reaching 518 feet (158 meters), about 10 percent less than the dam's maximum capacity.

Around China, a total of 875,000 homes have been destroyed, 9.61 million people evacuated, and 22 million acres (8.76 million hectares) of crops ruined in this year's flooding, according to the state flood control office.