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SCMP Reporter

More than 10 million soldiers and civilians were yesterday deployed to fight floods, with major efforts being made to stop the Yangtze River bursting its banks.

  Officials revealed that the death toll in flooding in several provinces has reached 716.

  In Hunan province, five million People's Liberation Army soldiers and residents battled raging waters along the Yangtze's tributaries and the famous Dongting Lake.

  Helicopters were used to airdrop food and relief to tens of thousands stranded by the rising waters. Many people had no food, little clothing and no clean water to drink for several days, said a local official.

  'We are going all out to row boats to rescue trapped people,' he said.

  More than 500 inflatable boats, 3,000 life preservers, and 2,000 lifebuoys have been delivered to Changsha, capital of Hunan, to help the rescue operation.

   Nationwide, nearly four million people have been cut off by flood waters, 810,000 homes have collapsed and 2.8 million homes damaged.

  Three million soldiers and residents in Hubei and one million people each in the eastern provinces of Jiangxi and Jiangsu were deployed to shore up and repair embankments straining against a water level now more than two metres above the danger point and still rising.

  Television footage showed hundreds of soldiers hurriedly filling canvas bags with sand and passing them along a human chain to bolster the river banks.

  In Hubei, a Foreign Affairs Bureau official said the Yangtze had risen to 28.38 metres in Wuhan, about 10 centimetres above the 1931 record, which triggered flooding that killed 32,000 people.

  From May to July 13, 132 people have died in Hubei and three million have been affected, he said, adding that rescue teams are bracing for further flooding on Monday, when more torrential rain is fore-cast.

  About 9.3 million people are affected in Hubei and flooding has cut road and rail lines and seriously damaged reservoirs and dams, the China News Service said.

  In neighbouring Guangxi, 135,000 people were trapped by rising waters, 16,000 are homeless and 53 have died.

  Thirty-eight major roads have been cut in the highest rainfall since 1902.

  Rain continued to fall in the southern province of Guizhou, according to an aid worker from Oxfam, who returned yesterday from an inspection tour of Kaili city, and Huangpin, Shibing and Jianhe counties.

  'The whole of Kaili city is a disaster area,' he said, 'and local governments are giving food, clothing, wood, plastic and blankets to 6,000 homeless people.'   In Jiangxi, the Yangtze was 1.89 metres above the danger level, and in nearby Poyang lake the level had reached 1.74 metres above the danger level, Xinhua (the New China News Agency) reported.

  More than 794,000 people have been hit in Jiangxi, where water levels continue to rise.

  Total economic losses from the floods in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Guizhou, Guangxi and Jiangsu provinces were estimated at nearly 40 billion yuan (HK$37.14 billion), according to officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs.



Millions toil to battle floods