China floods: Death toll goes up

People wade through a flooded street in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province on July 22. Pic/AFP

The death toll in central China's unprecedented flash floods triggered after the heaviest rainfall in 1,000 years has reached 33 with eight people missing, while officials raced to evacuate patients and medics stuck in waterlogged hospitals in the flood-hit Zhangzhou city.

The torrential rain has affected about three million people in Henan province and a total of 376,000 local residents have been relocated to safe places, the provincial emergency management department said.

Rainwater has damaged more than 2,15,200 hectares of crops, causing a direct economic loss of about 1.22 billion yuan (about $ 188.6 million), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The massive floods, described by meteorologists as a once-in-a-lifetime event, have resulted in apocalyptic scenes in Henan and its provincial capital Zhengzhou, a metropolis of 12.6 million, with its public avenues and subway tunnels getting submerged with surging waters.

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) blasted a damaged dam to divert the surging waters of a flooded river after the province received the heaviest rainfall in 1,000 years.

Twelve people were killed and five others injured when subway stations were hit by the floods. The victims died when their subway train was hit by rapidly rising floodwaters on Tuesday night. Two people were killed when a wall collapsed.

33
No. of people killed in the rain in China so far

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