CHINA:RISING WATER levels in southern China and in the area hit by the Sichuan earthquake threatened millions of people yesterday and forced authorities to evacuate 110,000 people from the quake zone.
Heavy rainstorms were expected to trigger new landslides and thunderstorms were forecast for the entire weekend as the annual rainy season kicked in.
This year the season is especially fraught because the Sichuan earthquake, which devastated the region, leaving 87,000 dead or missing, and millions homeless, has rendered many steep mountainsides unstable, as well as large areas of the southwest.
Of the 110,000 people evacuated yesterday, 70,000 came from Aba prefecture and an area that includes Wenchuan county, the quake's epicentre. Some survivors have been moved several times, driven from temporary home to temporary home by aftershocks, flooding from "quake lakes" and now the fear of landslides because of the rains. Some must be wondering will the horror unleashed on May 12th ever end.
Conditions in the tent cities are also getting worse. After more than a month of living in cramped conditions under tarpaulin, people are growing impatient. They want to go back to their own homes, or if they are no more, to more suitable temporary accommodation such as prefab houses.
In southern China, rescue workers are still trying to contain the effects of a torrential downpour which has submerged millions of acres of farmland and caused billions of euro in damage and lost production.
So far the swollen rivers have largely spared the tens of thousands of factories in the Pearl river delta in Guangdong province, but the situation is critical for millions of people there.
A huge flood crest flowed past the Makou monitoring station close to the provincial capital Guangzhou earlier in the week and remained almost half a metre higher than warning levels, according to the state flood headquarters' website.
Up to 176 people have died and 52 have gone missing in flood-related incidents in China this year, with 51 dead or missing since June 6th in the provinces and regions of Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hunan, it said.
Authorities fear the effects of the quake could spread northward, and have sent rescue officials to help strengthen dykes and reservoirs along the Yellow river, known as the "cradle of Chinese civilisation" and home to millions of urban dwellers and farmers.