Typhoons on the way after disastrous year for floods

The Chinese government said Wednesday that the number of people killed or missing in devastating floods across the country so far this year has risen to nearly 1,700. It warned the situation could worsen during the upcoming typhoon season. 

Residents walk on a road after floods hit the outskirts of Jilin city, Jilin province Reuters

Parts of southern, central and northern China have been lashed by summer downpours that have caused the worst flooding in a decade, triggered deadly landslides, cut off roads, and left villages inaccessible.

"So far this year, 140 million people have been impacted in 28 flood-hit provinces, 1,072 have been killed and 619 people are missing," Shu Qingpeng, spokesman for China's flood control headquarters, said in an online briefing.

Shu warned that if rain continued to fall on disaster-hit areas, "the flood-control situation would no doubt get even more severe". Typhoons frequently form and make landfall in August and September, which would only aggravate the situation.

According to China's national meteorological centre, the north-east of the country - already ravaged by flooding that has left more than 100 people dead or missing - will get more rain over the next 24 hours.

Some of the country's most important rivers are still swollen to dangerous levels. Shu confirmed that more than 160 cities across China were flooded, eight small reservoirs had collapsed and more than 1,000 reservoirs were at risk.

The overall situation has sparked fears of a repeat of the disastrous flooding of 1998, when heavy rain swelled the Yangtze, China's longest river, and many tributaries, leading to devastating levee collapses. At least 4,150 people are thought to have died, 18 million were evacuated and millions of homes were destroyed in the worst floods in the country's recent memory.

Nevertheless, Shu sought to ease concerns, saying a disaster on the scale of the 1998 flooding was unlikely.