Parts of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province, including Ganzi, have reported heavy rains that began Friday, according to Chinese state media.
File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities said that more than 440,000 people in southwestern Sichuan Province have been affected in the aftermath of torrential rains and floods.
Heavy rains of up to nearly 9 inches that began Friday caused rivers to swell and flooded six cities or regions in the province, including Luzhou, Mianyang, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong and Ganzi, state media reported.
In Nanchong, a monitoring station reported 17 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period, Xinhua said Monday.
According to China Central Television, 45 houses had collapsed in the province by Saturday and 118 other homes were severely damaged. Cost of damage at the time was estimated at $38.5 million.
Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said that it has deployed relief workers to five cities and 12 counties.
Evacuations are ongoing, according to state media. On Sunday, authorities said more than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Xinhua reported.
The natural disaster response in China's southwest comes less than a week after China said more than 300 people had died in the aftermath of flooding in Henan Province.
The floods in central China affected 14.5 million people and forced more than 933,000 people to evacuate, according to Henan's provincial authorities last week.
Liu Junyan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner, said that climate change has made "extreme weather like heat waves and floods more frequent and more deadly in the past 20 years," according to Bloomberg last month.
China has attempted to address flooding with the construction of dams, dikes and levees since the 1950s, but the policy may not be entirely effective.
Kirk Barlow, an analyst with International Rivers in Oakland, Calif., said that as "dams get larger, they tend to complicate flooding controls due to the unpredictability of climate change," according to Christian Science Monitor last month.
Dams in China collapsed this year, according to Barlow.
Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities said that more than 440,000 people in southwestern Sichuan Province have been affected in the aftermath of torrential rains and floods.
Heavy rains of up to nearly 9 inches that began Friday caused rivers to swell and flooded six cities or regions in the province, including Luzhou, Mianyang, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong and Ganzi, state media reported.
In Nanchong, a monitoring station reported 17 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period, Xinhua said Monday.
According to China Central Television, 45 houses had collapsed in the province by Saturday and 118 other homes were severely damaged. Cost of damage at the time was estimated at $38.5 million.
Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said that it has deployed relief workers to five cities and 12 counties.
Evacuations are ongoing, according to state media. On Sunday, authorities said more than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Xinhua reported.
The natural disaster response in China's southwest comes less than a week after China said more than 300 people had died in the aftermath of flooding in Henan Province.
The floods in central China affected 14.5 million people and forced more than 933,000 people to evacuate, according to Henan's provincial authorities last week.
Liu Junyan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner, said that climate change has made "extreme weather like heat waves and floods more frequent and more deadly in the past 20 years," according to Bloomberg last month.
China has attempted to address flooding with the construction of dams, dikes and levees since the 1950s, but the policy may not be entirely effective.
Kirk Barlow, an analyst with International Rivers in Oakland, Calif., said that as "dams get larger, they tend to complicate flooding controls due to the unpredictability of climate change," according to Christian Science Monitor last month.
Dams in China collapsed this year, according to Barlow.
No comments:
Post a Comment