The Portrait of a disastrous "Olympic Host" -- Quake-hit China now
menaced by floods and landslides

-- The mother earth is sending repeated warnings to the earthlins. --

Quake-hit China now menaced by floods and landslides

Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:42am EDT

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Floods triggered by torrential rains have killed
dozens of people across China, as officials struggle to move thousands
of victims of last month's earthquake to escape the threat of landslides
caused by downpours.

Already reeling from the May 12 quake centered on southwest Sichuan
province that killed more than 70,000 people, floods in southern China
have killed at least 57 people in recent days and forced 1.27 million to
move to safer ground, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

The floods have been especially heavy in southern Guangdong province,
home to many of the country's export businesses.

By Sunday, 20 people in Guangdong had died in the floods, eight were
missing, and more than 4,800 houses had collapsed, provincial flood
officials told Xinhua.

Nearly 240,000 Guangdong residents were shifted to safer ground,
including 60,000 in Shenzhen, the trade hub next to Hong Kong, the
provincial water resources office said, according to the official
Southern Daily.

State television showed footage of buildings submerged up to their
second floors and troops rescuing stranded residents with boats on
streets-turned-canals.

"Many factories were soaked since the heavy rain started last Thursday,"
said Feng Fei, an office worker at an insurance company in Dongguan, a
manufacturing hub north of Shenzhen.

"My company is not big, but we probably have to pay as many as 10
million yuan ($1.45 million) for about 200 cars damaged by the floods,"
Feng told Reuters by telephone, referring to insurance settlements.

Officials estimated that economic damage from the floods across
Guangdong had reached 3.8 billion yuan ($540 million), much of it to
farms and fisheries.

ALERT FOR YELLOW RIVER

Rains have also pounded northwest China, killing two people in Longnan,
a region in Gansu province, where hundreds died in last month's earthquake.

Flooding has also been reported in Jiangxi province and Guangxi, a major
sugar-producing region neighboring Guangdong.

Analysts said the floods' impact on industrial and agricultural
production would be limited.

"China has floods every year and droughts are a much more serious
problem for China's food supply and food prices," Ting Lu, China
economist at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong said.

But heavy rain likely in the next few days would "increase the
destructiveness of flood hazards and make the flood prevention and
relief situation nationwide even more serious", Xinhua cited the
Ministry of Civil Affairs as warning.

Adding to fears just months before the country hosts the Olympics, the
national meteorological service said the 5,500-km (3,400-mile) Yellow
River flowing through the north might also see "quite large" floods this
year, Xinhua reported late on Sunday.

The Yellow River, China's second longest after the Yangtze, has
experienced devastating floods in the past, but in recent decades has
been more prone to water scarcity.

At a cabinet-level meeting on Monday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao ordered
authorities to check renewed threats on dams strained by floodwaters in
quake-hit areas in Sichuan and parts of neighboring provinces.

"Aftershocks have continued into the flooding season and rainfall has
noticeably increased... (Officials) must carry out further engineering
measures to eradicate threats on dammed reservoirs where dangers
remain," he said in notes on the meeting posted on the central
government website (www.gov.cn).

Landslides in quake-hit regions have caused dozens of swelling "quake
lakes" which officials fear could burst and threaten thousands of people
in villages downstream. The walls of a number of existing dams were also
weakened by the quake.

Authorities are struggling to evacuate tens of thousands of people from
quake-hit areas under threat from rain-triggered landslides and to
provide housing for millions of people left homeless.

With tremors still jolting hillsides, officials have decided to relocate
50,000 residents at risk of landslides in Wenchuan County, the epicenter
of the quake.

Last week, county officials told threatened residents to move to safer
areas, and troops had relocated 3,000 by Monday, Xinhua reported. All at
risk must be moved by the end of June, before the rainy season starts in
earnest, it said.

The flooding and foul weather is the latest in a string of disasters to
befall China this year. Many of the same provinces were paralyzed by
freak cold weather in January and February.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley, Guo Shipeng and Ian Ransom; Editing by
David Fogarty)

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USPEK1811820080616

($1 = 6.902 Yuan)