China's Jiangxi ups emergency response amid persistent drought

NANCHANG, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- East China's Jiangxi Province on Wednesday raised its drought emergency response from Level IV to Level Ⅲ starting from 10 a.m. as the drought continues.

China has a four-level emergency response system for disaster relief, with Level IV being the lowest and Level I the highest.

From July 15 to 5 p.m. of Tuesday, unrelenting drought had left nearly 3 million people from 104 counties and districts in the province affected. A total of 365,300 hectares of crops were damaged.

As of 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the province had sent more than 1.5 million people to fight against the drought. Drought-resistant facilities have also been allocated to the affected areas, helping reduce losses of cash crops by 3.2 billion yuan (about 465.9 million U.S. dollars) and losses of grain by about 3.26 billion yuan.