South China Cleaning Up From Floods But More Rain On The Way

BEIJING (AP) - Parts of southern China still cleaning up Thursday from floods that have left at least 20 people dead or missing are forecast to be hit with more rain over coming days.

Nearly 3 million people have been affected by the floods with 228,000 forced to seek shelter and 1,300 homes destroyed, tour trương gia giới according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

Direct economic losses are estimated at more than $500 million, the ministry said.

While damage has been concentrated in Hunan province and tour phượng hoàng cổ trấn the Guangxi region, authorities were monitoring the situation in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, which lies along the Yangtze River, Vice Minister of Water Resources Ye Jianchun said Thursday at a briefing.

Guangxi's crucial tourism sector, already hit hard by the pandemic, has suffered further losses from the floods.

In the picturesque town of Yangshuo, famed for its river scenery and karst outcroppings, streets flooded and tourists had to be evacuated on bamboo rafts.

The county government said more than 1,000 hotels and home-stays and 5,000 shops suffered water damage.

Firefighters and other public workers pitched in helping to clear debris and spray disinfectant, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Rescuers carry a child to a boat during an evacuation of a flooded village in Qingyuan in southern China's Guangdong province on Monday, June 8, 2020.

Flooding in south and central China has lead to more than a dozen deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, kynghidongduong.vn the government said Wednesday. (Chinatopix Via AP)

Seasonal flooding regularly strikes the lower regions of China´s major river systems, particularly those of the Yangtze and the Pearl to the south.

Authorities have sought to mitigate the damage through the use of dams, particularly the massive Three Gorges structure on the Yangtze.

China´s worst floods in recent years were in 1998, when more than 2,000 people died and almost 3 million homes were destroyed.
In this June 7, 2020 photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, floodwaters surround a village in Yangshuo in Guilin in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Authorities say several people have died in flooding in central China, with more heavy rain forecast for the region in coming days.

(Lu Boan/Xinhua via AP)
In this June 7, 2020, photo released by Xinhua News Agency, facilities at a tourism site are toppled in the aftermath of a flood after heavy downpour in Yangshuo of Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Flooding in south and central China has lead to more than a dozen deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, the government said Wednesday.

(Lu Boan/Xinhua via AP)