Heavy rains and hailstorms pounded the disaster-prone counties of Min and Zhang, in China’s northwest Gansu Province on Sept.16, leaving eight dead, 28 injured, and more than 48,000 people evacuated from their homes, according to the Gansu Daily newspaper.
Floods and mudflows were triggered by the torrential rains, with all the fatalities and injuries occurring in Laoyoudian Village of Meichuan Town in Min County. Lightening strikes added to the misery causing power outages, and many roads and properties were damaged due to flooding, according to the Gansu Daily website.
Min County counted the losses of the disaster on the evening of Sept. 17. Approximately 40,759 people across 60 villages in four towns were affected, and roughly 4,000 acres of crops damaged and 740 acres of farmland ruined, according to the Gansu Daily. The severe hailstorms and flood also caused at least 2690 homes damaged or destroyed. Direct economic losses were estimated at US$74 million (458 million yuan), the website said.
A similar scene was occurring in Zhang County, affecting more than 50,000 people across 51 villages, where the overall loss has been estimated at US$282 million (1.73 billion yuan). With around 5,000 homes damaged or destroyed, and over 8,000 acres of crops affected.
“The rain was so heavy as if water were pouring off from a barrel on a roof. The water level in the river within the village was rising up sharply so the water washed to the shore. I recalled such heavy rain happened in 1981,” 83-year-old Yu Suoshou of Laoyoudian told the Lanzhou Evening News.
The affected area had recently been hit by an earthquake.
“The deadly earthquake on July 22 has left our houses in a dangerous state. We have been forced to live in disaster relief tents set up in the flood ways. Monday night’s heavy rain caused the river to overflow. Many tents were flooded away,” the paper quoted another villager Yu Jianmin as saying.
“Let us remember the place Laoyoudian [“Laoyou” means old and young in Chinese], where an old grandfather with his young granddaughter were washed away from their earthquake relief tent by relentless floods. They had luckily survived the earthquake from 57 days ago but unfortunately were unable to escape this flood,” as reported by a netizen on a Min County microblog on Weibo, China’s twitter-like platform.
On July 22, a 6.6-magnitude earthquake hit Min and Zhang counties, killing 95 people, according to officials.
Translated by Euly Luo. Written in English by Christine Ford.
Read the original Chinese article.
