Rain shuts down old Chinese capital

BEIJING: Torrential rains left 37 dead in China’s ancient capital Luoyang, and shut the World Heritage site as authorities on Monday warned other flood-hit areas to brace for renewed deluges in days ahead.

China’s worst flooding in 10 years has already left more than 1,200 dead or missing this year. Weekend torrential rains left another 19 people missing in Luoyang, a city in the central province of Henan that is famed for its 1,500-year-old Longmen Grottoes, a World Heritage Site.

Reports say that the downpours have been the worst in 50 years.

All in all, more than 50 people had been killed in Henan due to rain-triggered floods, informed the province’s water resources department.

The northern province of Shaanxi, meanwhile, is reeling from downpours that have killed 111 people in just four days and left another 167 missing, the government said.

More than 700,000 people were forced to flee their homes and nearly 48,000 houses collapsed as some areas there saw the worst rain in 500 years, it said.

In the southwestern province of Yunnan, 11 people are missing after rain-triggered landslides early Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Another 13 miners died over the weekend, in a landslide triggered by days of rain in Huating county in the northwestern province of Gansu, the state-run Gansu Daily reported. Two workers who were buried survived.

National weather authorities have warned more rain in some flood-hit areas, which are generally centered on the drainage basin of the Yangtze River.

The persistent rains, often torrential downpours, have wreaked havoc in countless communities, killing 823 people and leaving 437 missing nationwide this year, according to the latest official figures announced on Monday.

They also have left major rivers such as the Yangtze, Huai and many of their tributaries dangerously swollen.

The situation along the Han River, a Yangtze tributary, was also serious and authorities ordered that water be diverted into an emergency reservoir, Xinhua said.

Engineers at the the world’s largest Three Gorges Dam warned that the reservoir’s water levels could go nearly 14 metres over the danger line, which has lead authorities to issue warnings downstream.

Premier Wen Jiabao warned Saturday the situation was at a “crucial stage” and called for stepped up flood prevention efforts across rain-hit regions, which comprise the entire southern half of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2010.