Society

Rain, floods continue to batter S China

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-18 14:05

WUHAN - Heavy rain and ensuing floods continued to batter southern China Saturday, swelling rivers and causing landslides that forced the evacuation of thousands.

In Shiyan city of central Hubei province, at least 4,000 were evacuated after a landslide of 10,000 cubic meters of rock and sludge threatened a village Friday night, the local government said.

It was the second landslide to hit Fangxian county this week.

Related readings:  Flood alert at top level; 555,000 evacuated  Rivers struggling to cope as flood crisis deepens  Rains batter parts of China, floods spread

Six people went missing in the previous landslide on Tuesday, when huge rocks rained down the mountains and formed a 500-meter long, 100-meter wide barrier lake that threatened to burst and sweep the downstream villages.

Water conservancy experts launched three blasts Wednesday hoping to remove the dangerous lake, but only succeeded in reducing its water level and discharging about 700,000 cubic meters of water.

Friday's downpour, however, swelled the lake again.

At 8 am Saturday, the lake's water storage was 1.35 million cubic meters, compared with 1.3 million cubic meters on Wednesday.

The local government has launched round-the-clock monitoring of the lake and is ready to evacuate more people in case of further risks, said Zhou Ji, mayor of Shiyan city.

The weather bureau has forecast more rain in the city on Saturday.

Three rounds of torrential rain have battered Hubei since the rainy season began on June 9, with the latest round beginning Friday.

Thirty counties reported more than 50 mm of rainfall in the past 24 hours and eight of them received over 100 mm of precipitation, the local weather bureau said Saturday.

In the worst-hit Hefeng county in southwestern Hubei, precipitation reached 182 mm in the 24 hours from 8 am Friday to 8 am Saturday.

The provincial flood control and drought relief office said the downpour had eased a seven-month drought in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River but warned of geological disasters.