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China braced for more severe floods

China has warned of more severe floods in central and southern parts of the country after millions of people were forced to evacuate the region due to the early onset of the rainy season.

Reuters/Lang Lang
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Persistant heavy rains that began in the first week of June have swamped these areas with more than 10 major rivers on the verge of bursting their banks.

A recent three-hour downpour saw a near-record 312 millimetres of rain in Wangmo county in Guizhou province in the southwest, while over 200 millimetres of rain has fallen over short periods in numerous other regions according to Chen Lei, the Minister of Water Resources.

The Beijing News reports that more than one million people in eight provinces, regions and municipalities were evacuated from their homes in early June due to flooding. And more than six million people have been somehow affected by the rain and flooding in Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, while 2.65 million were affected in coastal Zhejiang province.

So far, at least 168 people are dead or missing because of the rains. The downpours are a dramatic change for provinces like Hubei, Anhui, and Zhejiang, parts of which had until recently been sweltering under the worst drought in decades.

Heavy rains since Saturday caused the Lan river in the city of Lanxi in Zhejiang province to rise sharply, reaching its highest level since 1966.

In the southwestern province of Yunnan, five people were killed and another was missing after surging floodwaters swept through a pair of rural villages during a hailstorm on Sunday.

Torrential downpours across large swathes of the country last year triggered the nation's worst floods in a decade, leaving more than 4,300 people dead or missing in floods, landslides and other rain-related disasters.

One devastating mudslide in the northwestern province of Gansu killed 1,500 people last August.

 

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