"China grapples with epic flooding"

By Mitchell Landsberg / from the LA Times

HUAINAN, CHINA — Heavy rains have inundated the central part of the nation, affecting 100 million people. More than 1million have been evacuated.

For days, the rain had come in warm, drenching sheets. It swelled the Huai River and turned the heavy clay soil along its watershed into a sticky muck that sucked the shoes off people's feet.

Zheng Zhaojun had lived here long enough, all of his 32 years, to know the danger the river posed. So when the Communist Party secretary for his village came calling, Zheng moved quickly.

"They told us the water is rising fast — go," Zheng recalled as he stood in the doorway of the blue canvas tent that has been his family's temporary home for nearly two weeks. The tent, and dozens around it, stood about 10 feet from a small, hastily built earthen levee. Behind it, water stretched nearly to the horizon, covering Zheng's house and farm and the properties of thousands of others.

Zheng's story is a common one this summer. Heavy rains have inundated central China, causing the worst flooding in half a century. More than 100 million people have been affected, and some of them have witnessed rainfall of mind-boggling ferocity, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Nearly as mind-boggling have been the size and scope of the evacuation....

The flooding along the Huai was caused by various factors, including levees that broke, were opened intentionally or were too low for the rising waters. The New China News Agency said today that more than 500 embankments were in danger of being breached in Anhui province.

People walked, rode motorbikes or got rides in cars, trucks and tractors to reach higher ground, where they either moved in with friends and relatives or sought shelter in government centers...

"All our belongings are in the water now," he said. The most valuable are the crops, including corn, beans and sweet potato, which account for much of the family's economic output.

"If the water goes down now, they might be saved," he said.

That, weather officials say, is unlikely. Forecasts call for continued rain, and the flooding is expected to continue for days.