Floods swamp Asia as China lake almost overflows

Floods swamp Asia as China lake almost overflows

Reuters, Beijing

More than 10 million people are at risk in China as a giant
flood-swollen lake came close to bursting its banks on Tuesday
while elsewhere in Asia floods brought more death and misery.

Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands
forced from their homes across the region in recent days by
floods that have washed away roads and bridges and destroyed
large areas of crops.

In India, water levels of all rivers in the flood-hit
northeast fell but weather officials warned of heavy rains in the
next 36 hours, raising fears of fresh flooding in the region. In
Cambodia, floods have inundated scores of villages and are also
threatening Vietnam's capital Hanoi.

Dongting lake, China's second largest, is already more than
1.5 meters over the 32 meter flood warning level and expected to
rise as rain-swollen rivers poured into it, state television
said.

Dongting acts as a giant overflow for the flood-prone Yangtze
River and thousands of kilometers of dikes around it shield more
than 10 million people and 667,000 hectares of fertile farmland,
the official China Daily newspaper said.

The television news said the lake had hit warning levels along
some 900 km of embankments, and authorities. had mobilized
thousands of people to man the defenses. Officials around
Dongting, in the southern province of Hunan, were unavailable for
comment.

In 1998, more than 4,000 people died in the worst flooding in
decades after the Yangtze and Dongting burst their banks.

China's summer floods began early this year and have already
claimed more than 900 lives, prompting official warnings that
they could be as bad as, or worse, than in 1998.

The flood control minister of India's Assam state, Nurjamal
Sarkar, said thousands of people were still living in makeshift
shelters because their homes had been destroyed by the flood
waters.

"Though the flood situation has improved, a few thousand
people are still living in camps because the area around their
homes is still muddy and the debris has not been cleared," he
said.

At least 900 people have died in eastern India, Nepal and
Bangladesh since the middle of July after heavy monsoon rains
triggered widespread flooding, landslides and disease.

In Cambodia, water levels on the Mekong river rose to above
emergency levels in two central towns following heavy rain in the
northeast of the country and in Laos to the north.

A child drowned in Kratie, about 200 kilometers upstream from
the capital Phnom Penh and normally the first town to be hit by
seasonal floods. Some 160 villages in Kratie province were under
water, officials said.

Floods that inundated Vietnam's northern provinces were
receding slowly but dikes around the capital Hanoi were still at
risk from rain falling across southern China. Rain in China
spilled into Vietnam last week and at least 31 people were killed
in flooding.

"It's miserable, but we get used to it because we have these
floods almost every year," said Le Xuan Tien, 42, a resident of
Hanoi's Red river area.