FUZHOU -- Rainstorms continued to wreak havoc in China Thursday, leaving six people dead and four others missing after rain-triggered floods in the eastern Fujian Province, local authorities said.
Continuous downpours that started on Sunday battered the western and central parts of Fujian, affecting 420,000 people and forcing 171,800 to evacuate, the provincial flood prevention and drought control office said in a press release.
Yunxiao County in the city of Zhangzhou received 404 mm of rain from 8 a.m. Sunday to 2 p.m. Thursday, the maximum precipitation reported in all the 21 rainstorm-hit counties, it said.
But Liancheng County in the city of Longyan suffered the most. Heavy rains swelled rivers and flooded the county seat, where flood water was more than 2 meters deep for seven hours on Thursday. The rainstorm cut off traffic, power and water supplies and telecommunication services, the document said.
Rain-triggered floods have toppled 11,000 homes and damaged 26,220 hectares of cropland across the province, it said. At least 16 km of embankments and 345 sluices and hydropower stations were destroyed. The direct economic losses were estimated at 4.2 billion yuan.
The rainstorm subsided at 5 p.m., the provincial meteorological bureau said.
Meanwhile, continuous rainstorms have affected 360,700 people in 14 counties, districts and cities in central China's Hubei Province since Wednesday, the provincial civil affairs department said.
As of 2 p.m. on Thursday, about 36,950 hectares of cropland had been damaged and 145 houses had collapsed, resulting in direct economic losses of 67.79 million yuan (10.9 million U.S. dollars), it said.
The provincial capital Wuhan was inundated on Thursday, with maximum precipitation exceeding 100 mm in the downtown areas.
In central China's Hunan Province, more than 9,000 people have been relocated since a rainstorm started on Wednesday
Torrential rain also hit the southern province of Guangdong, affecting 288,700 people in five cities and forcing 11,400 to evacuate.
Even the drought-hit Yunnan Province in the southwest suffered downpour over the past 24 hours. The provincial weather bureau said heavy rain would continue until Saturday.
