Rebuilding in Full Swing in China's Flood-hit Areas

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, June 23, 2002

Rebuilding in Full Swing in China's Flood-hit Areas

Although more heavy rains are forecast for many parts of China, rebuilding is now in full swing in already flood-ravaged areas of the country.

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Although more heavy rains are forecast for many parts of China, rebuilding is now in full swing in already flood-ravaged areas of the country.

While tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been mobilized to repair railways, highways and other infrastructure in flood-stricken areas in 19 provinces and autonomous regions, farmers there are busy cleaning up their farmland and replanting.

Foping County in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, isolated by floodwaters from June 8 to 10, is accessible again since a major road linking it to the outside world was rebuilt last week.

Another road connecting Foping to a neighboring county is also under reconstruction.

"With the combined efforts of armed police and construction workers, the repair work can be completed ahead of schedule," said Zhang Rongzhu, who is in charge of road reconstruction.

The rebuilding of a railway bridge on a major east-west line across China, which was destroyed by floods on June 9, began Friday.

The reconstructed Bahe River railway bridge near Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi, is scheduled for completion in September and will allow more trains to cross it.

In Ningshan County, also in Shaanxi, agrotechnicians have been checking flood-related damage to crops these days and advising farmers on what and how to replant.

The local government has provided farmers with more than 12,000 kg of crop seeds, mainly corn, soybean, cucumber, and radish.

Huang Sihe, a farmer in Laozhuang Village, Ningshan, spent the last few days removing dirt and silt left by the floods from a section of farmland behind his house and replanting it in radishes as soon as floodwaters receded.

"The floods washed away everything from my farmland," Huang said. "We're just trying to reduce flood-related losses to the minimum."

Heavy rains since early June have swollen rivers and triggered mud and rock flows, landslides and flooding in 19 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions, including Shaanxi, Guangxi, Fujian and Sichuan.

Floods swept villages away, washed out bridges, severed roads, forced tens of thousands from their homes, damaged crops across five percent of the country's farmland and caused tens of millions of dollars worth of damage.

It is estimated that in Shaanxi alone, floods from June 8 to 10 inflicted direct losses of some 2.1 billion yuan (about 253 million U.S. dollars).

With assistance coming from other parts of the country, reconstruction began almost as soon as the floods occurred.

As in Shaanxi, no sooner had disastrous floods struck Guilin, a scenic city in Guangxi, during June 14-16, leveling more than 7, 000 houses and affecting some 99,240 hectares of farmland, than its 300,000 people quickly began to rebuild their houses, wash crops and repair water conservation facilities.

When torrential rains caused landslides and interrupted services on several railway arteries in mid-June in Fujian, a province beside the Taiwan Straits, China's State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters immediately dispatched a work team to coordinate relief and rebuilding.

Thanks to joint efforts by troops and residents, water, power, transport and telecommunications services in Jianning, Jiangle and Shunchang, the three counties worst hit by floods, were all restored by June 18.

Flood-control measures are set to increase across China as experts have warned that more floods are likely to occur next month, the beginning of the country's major flood season.

People in many regions, especially those in the area between Huaihe and Yangtze rivers, are urged by meteorologists to brace for more heavy rains this summer.

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