Floods in China: 90 per cent of government-ordered evacuees had to find their own place to stay
- Tens of millions of people were affected by floods and tens of thousands of homes were destroyed
- 219 people died but officials say decisive and large-scale evacuation saved many lives
Flooding through central and southern China has claimed the lives of 219 people and caused 178.9 billion yuan (US$25.77 billion) in economic losses since heavy rains began in June.
Tens of millions of people had been affected by floods and tens of thousands of homes were destroyed, Zhou Xuewen, China’s vice-minister of emergency management, said in Beijing on Thursday.
Zhou said most of the 4 million displaced residents were “temporary” evacuees, spending one or two days away from home before returning, while the rest had been ordered by the government to resettle, or move from their homes.
Those ordered to leave were forced to find their own housing where they could. Zhou estimated more than 90 per cent of those resettled by the government had to rely on friends and family for housing.
“Some people have homes in the city, and some have children in the city and went to live with them,” Zhou said.
Fewer than 10 per cent of people moved were placed in government facilities, mostly in the four provinces of Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei and Hunan, Zhou said.
Zhou said there were around 60,000 resettled people in 920 locations in late July, but that number had fallen to 18,000 in 252 locations by Wednesday. Most of these people had been moved into schools not in use during the summer holidays, Zhou said.
Heavy rains continued to fall across China this week. Officials in Beijing closed parks and tourists sites on Wednesday ahead of heavy rainfall, while downpours and flooding battered parts of Sichuan province in southwestern China.
The amount of rain in China this summer has broken records across the country. The Jianghuai river basin – which stretches from southern Henan to Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu province – has received 760mm (30 inches) of water over 62 days, the most seen since 1961, according to Yu Yong, deputy director of the China Meteorological Administration.
Yu said 32 counties across central and southern China had seen their daily rainfall records broken.
He said typhoons, which had already contributed to rainfall this year, could continue to strike through September when an estimated two to five typhoons could hit China’s east coast.
Three of the six typhoons this season formed over the Pacific and South China Sea, said Yu. Three typhoons struck land this season but caused little damage.
Zhou warned that while late July and early August were considered the worst time of the year for floods, China needed to remain on deluge alert until the end of September.
“The possibility of flood disasters in the next stage is still very high, and there will be important work in flood prevention and response to come. We cannot relax,” Zhou said.
