STRICKEN VILLAGERS TELL OF FLOODING ORDEALS

Deaths, landslides reported as waters inundate homes

Qiu Zhongrong held high a bag of food and candles as he mad his way through neck-high muddy water on a narrow road leading to his flooded home.

"I knew the way very well, so I could step on the more solid areas of ground. Otherwise, I would have drowned. And I'm 1.75 meters tall," he said.

Qiu said that on Monday morning, water from rivers that burst their banks caused sudden flooding to his home in Shipi village, Shangping township, Heyuan, Guangdong province.

He was in Heyuan when he heard from his sister, who lives in another village, just how serious the flooding was. His brother-in-law tried to drive him home until floodwaters reached the doors of their pickup truck. At that point, Qiu continued his journey on foot.

Qiu reached home shortly after 11 am only to see floodwaters nearly 2-meters high in the first floor of his three-story house. With the door unable to be opened due to the waters inside, he entered his home through a window. His parents and niece were still inside.

"I was really worried. My father is in his 70s, my mother is 57 and my niece is just 2," he said.

Qiu's mother had only managed to grab one can of baby milk power before she escaped to the second floor, which was not furnished.

"They were desperate," Qiu said.

Heyuan, in northeast Guangdong, is one of the areas hardest hit by torrential downpours, which began last week.

Heavy rain is forecast to continue falling in the province until Friday, with thunderstorms and strong winds in some places. The downpours have also hit the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in South China, and Jiangxi and Fujian provinces in the east of the country.

Qiu's family spent several nights without running water and electricity. All their possessions were on the first floor and under the water, including electrical appliances, furniture and cooking devices.

The floodwaters arrived in the village at about 9 am on Monday. At Qiu Zhenyang's house, also in Shipi village, they reached a height of 1.2 meters on the first floor in just minutes.

Qiu Zhenyang, his mother, wife, daughter and son have not been able to take a shower since Monday, as their home is without water.

While his father pumped water from a well to clean the house, other family members swept mud from every room on the first floor.

The family received food such as instant noodles, canned porridge, biscuits and bottled water that were distributed in the village, and used a vehicle traveling between different areas to charge their mobile phones.

In Xiadong village, near Shipi, Party chief Huang Zhengpiao and his colleagues consoled families after four elderly women died from drowning or in houses that collapsed. The first funerals were held on Wednesday.

Most of the old houses in the village of 2,027 people collapsed as the floodwater rose as high as 5 meters. Some 150 villagers were relocated to shelters in primary and middle schools, while others went to relatives' homes.

Huang said he first saw water running high on Monday in the three rivers that meet in the village.

"We have not seen such huge flooding for 100 years," he said.

Tree trunks and branches washed away by the flooding piled up at some low-lying farms, while water marks could be seen high on the outer walls of houses.

Donations of cooked rice and other food were taken to the village on Wednesday by volunteers, and the local authorities were trying to restore supplies of tap water on Thursday.

At Shangping Middle School, which was transformed into a shelter for villagers whose homes were inundated by the waters, 13-year-old Xie Jianhang helped place a face mask on a baby.

Village committee representatives on Monday helped Xie and his grandmother to relocate to the shelter from their home in Dongyang village.

He had earlier moved cooking oil and rice to the upper floor of his house after scaling a wall shared with a neighbor and entering the premises through a window.

"I was not afraid. I just felt disgusted. That stinky smell - it was everywhere," Xie said.

Every day, he and his grandmother have walked for about half an hour back to their home to join his father, who works outside of the area, in cleaning the house.

At the entrance to the school, food, drinks and quilts donated by people in Shenzhen, Guangdong, who come from the Shangping area, were unloaded from a truck that arrived from the city on Wednesday morning.

In the Shangping township government yard, several groups of volunteers helped with relief work, including loading trucks with donated food and drinks. Telecom and general medical services were provided at temporary booths in the yard and also outside.

The township recorded the heaviest rainfall, of 249.1 millimeters, between 8 pm on Sunday and 7:30 pm on Monday, with 74 monitoring stations reporting more than 100 mm and eight recording half that amount, according to the city government.

As of Wednesday morning, 13 people had been killed by the floods in Heyuan, 2,077 houses toppled, 98 bridges damaged, 3,159 cases of landslides reported and 17,300 people evacuated.

Heyuan government officials stressed the importance of safeguarding lives and protecting the Dongjiang River, an important source of drinking water for large areas of Guangdong.

Military personnel joined firefighters and other rescue workers with boats and rafts, while helicopters were used to evacuate villagers.

In Fujian, which borders Guangdong, 117,000 people living in 227 towns in the northern mountains were affected by the flooding, 210 houses collapsed and 30,600 people were evacuated.

In Ji'an, Jiangxi, by midnight on Tuesday, the floods had affected nearly 1 million people and damaged 56,000 hectares of crops. Direct losses were estimated at more than 2 billion yuan ($289 million).

Liu Xianhui, 47, a farmer in Ji'an, said: "Growing vegetables and rice are our main sources of income. The floods ravaged pepper plants and rice growing in the fields, resulting in losses of 20,000 yuan for each household."

In Guangxi, heavy rain started to fall on June 4, triggering floods that left 17 people dead and nine missing by Wednesday, according to the provincial emergency management bureau.

Wu Minggui, Party chief of Longshui town, Quanzhou county, Guangxi, said Quanfu village in the township lost contact with the outside world on Sunday after a landslide and power cut.

"We tried to get into the village by sending two rescue teams, but could not reach the villagers. Finally, we had to turn to the local fire department for help."

On Tuesday, five firefighters managed to enter the village after a three-hour trek. They delivered supplies of rice, candles and drinking water to the 300 residents.

One badly hurt villager was carried from his home by firefighters and sent to hospital.

"When the firefighters reached the village, they found supplies of food and water had run extremely low," Wu said.

Near Quanfu, another village was hit by a landslide in which 22 houses collapsed, but there were no casualties.

Jiang Jifu, the Quanjia village head, went door-to-door to warn residents of the landslide as soon as he received news about it early on Sunday morning.