Torrential rains and floods across southern China have claimed at least 57 lives over the past 10 days, the government said yesterday.
More than 18 million people in Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region have been hit by the floods.
And about 1.3 million people have been moved to safer places in those areas, said the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The economic loss because of the rain and floods has reached 10.6 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), with crops on 902,000 hectares destroyed. More than 45,000 houses have collapsed and 140,000 houses were damaged.
Continuous rain has wreaked havoc across the south, disrupting traffic and damaging crops, and causing power outages in a few areas.
Vegetable prices have soared amid tight supplies in some areas. In Guangdong, the worst hit province, vegetable prices jumped 70 percent in the cities of Guangzhou, Shantou, Chaozhou and Shaoguan on Saturday.
The ministry raised the national disaster emergency response system to level-III late on Saturday and dispatched teams of officials and experts to the affected areas to help with relief work.
The level-III response requires the ministry to send people to the disaster areas within 24 hours and relief fund and materials within 48 hours. Level-I is the highest natural disaster response mechanism, and level-IV the lowest.
The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) warned yesterday that heavy downpours will continue to lash most parts of southern China over the next 10 days, and some areas could experience torrential rain, strong gales and thunderstorms.
Precipitation in most southwest provinces, including Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan, will be 30 to 70 percent higher than what it was during the same period last year, the CMA said.
Downpours can raise river levels further, inundate many areas along the Pearl River and cause major flooding along the the Xijiang River, said the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
The Xijiang River, the western tributary of the Pearl River that runs through Guangxi and Guangdong, has already crossed the danger mark at many places.
It was 6.84 m above the danger level at a Wuzhou monitoring site at 2 pm on Saturday, the headquarters said.
Water in one of its sections broke its banks, threatening tens of thousands of people, said local authorities.
The force of the rising river created a 40-m crack in the Dayaochong embankment in Changzhou town, near Wuzhou, early yesterday morning, said Zhang Jinshen, an official in charge of flood control.
Water rushed into Longhua village nearby, forcing nearly 120,000 people to flee to higher ground.
Hundreds of people were mobilized to build a temporary 5-m-high dyke with earth and sand bags near the breached section of the embankment, but the dyke was soon breached.
In the southern part of Guangdong, streets and houses in some towns along the Xijiang River have been submerged.
"A major flood is feared if the rain continues," said Huang Boqing, deputy director of the Guangdong flood control and drought relief headquarters.
At least 28 people are dead or missing in Guangdong, and more than 2.2 million people have been hit by the rain and floods, the worst in the Pearl River Delta region in 50 years.
The average daily rainfall of 415 mm in Guangdong in recent days is double that in the previous years.
（英语点津 Helen 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Bernice Chan is a foreign expert at China Daily Website. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Bernice has written for newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong and most recently worked as a broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, producing current affairs shows and documentaries
