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.