Society

Downpour displaces thousands in Chongqing

By Wang Yan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-10 06:50

The scene at a car park in Youyang county of Chongqing after a downpour on Friday. The county was battered by its heaviest rainfall since the beginning of summer. Huang Shenghua / China News Service

CHANGSHA - At least 15 people are dead and tens of thousands evacuated after the heaviest downpours this summer battered parts of Central and South China on Friday.

The downpours triggered landslides and debris flows, and severed roads and railway lines in Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces.

This round of precipitation, which started on Thursday and is expected to end on Tuesday, will be the heaviest and longest-lasting since the start of this summer, said Sun Jun, chief weather forecaster with the National Meteorological Center.

In Central China's Hunan province, six people were killed, 56,000 relocated and 760,000 in total affected by the heavy rains, said the provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

The rain had inflicted direct economic losses of 1 billion yuan ($147 million) in Hunan alone, said the headquarters.

Hunan's neighboring province of Hubei saw seven people killed due to rain-triggered accidents, as well as economic losses of more than 1 billion yuan.

More than 3.9 million people were affected in 53 counties and cities in Hubei, the provincial civil affairs department said.

A woman and her daughter were crushed to death in their sleep after their house collapsed in heavy rain in Qingtian county, Lishui city of East China's Zhejiang province, said municipal fire fighters.

In Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, about 15,000 people were evacuated from their homes on Friday after torrential rains left two townships with flood waters up to 1.2 meters deep.

No casualties were reported in flash floods that hit Fenshui and Sanzheng townships in Wanzhou district, near the massive Three Gorge Dam project.

"One of my relatives almost drowned after water gushed into the ground-floor apartment through the windows. The family was dragged out by people using a rope," said Zeng Jun, a resident at Fenshui.

A rain-triggered landslide disrupted the Sichuan-Guizhou Railway in Tongzi county in Southwest China's Guizhou province around 8 am on Friday, said Wang Zhong, head of Tongzi county government.

The landslide, with more than 2,000 cubic meters of debris, occurred in Dahe town. Over 300 workers with seven excavators were battling to repair the railway.

"The railway is expected to be fixed by 5 pm. A total of 10 trains will be affected by the landslide," said Wang.

In Chongqing, the train station was paralyzed by torrential rain. All arrivals and departures had been cancelled on Friday, and when rail service gets back to normal depends on the weather, Xinhua reported.

Heavy rains and floods in South and Central China since mid-June have killed more than 200 people.

China Daily

(China Daily 07/10/2010 page3)