Flood Death Toll Rises in China
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BEIJING — The death toll rose yesterday to at least 70 people as pounding weekend rains flooded wide areas of southern China and added to the misery of a nation wracked by natural disasters this year.
More rain is forecast over the next 10 days, and authorities were concerned about a 130-foot-long crack in an embankment of the Xijiang River, a major tributary of the Pearl River.
The opening put at risk the nearby city of Wuzhou, population 3 million.
More than 1 million people have been evacuated from the flood zones.
The flooding was driving up already inflated food prices, with vegetable prices rising as much as 70% in Guangdong province, according to the official New China News Agency.
Inflation of food prices was a pressing concern in China after freakish winter storms that damaged cropland over Chinese New Year and last month’s earthquake in Sichuan province.
Summer flooding is a perennial problem in China, but early indications are that this year’s could be extraordinary.
