Heavy downpours take toll in Hubei

Firefighters help residents navigate a flooded street in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, on Friday. Chen Zhuo / for China Daily

Rain-triggered floods have killed 10 people and affected about 2.37 million in Central China's Hubei province, provincial authorities said on Friday.

From June 25 to Friday, continuous downpours have pounded Hubei, causing torrential floods, landslides and other serious geological disasters, according to the Hubei provincial civil affairs bureau.

Floodwaters have covered 199,000 hectares of farmland and led to the collapse of 3,887 houses in Hubei.

The direct economic losses have been estimated at about 1 billion yuan ($156 million).

Local governments have relocated about 118,800 people.

The Hubei provincial government has sent six work teams to the disaster-hit regions with relief supplies, including food, quilts and clothes.

Rain has also caused traffic chaos in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

Tian Aizhi, 29, was trapped on an overpass in Wuhan for two hours by a deep pool of water on the road. She was traveling on a bus from Huanggang to the provincial capital on Friday.

"We were trapped together with many other vehicles. Usually it takes two hours at most to travel from Huanggang to where I live in Wuhan, but this time it took me more than four hours," Tian said.

The driver of Tian's bus eventually chose to go in the left lane. It was like "driving in the sea", Tian said.

A traffic police officer at Wusheng Road in Wuhan said the area was already flooded at noon, and the traffic police had pulled seven cars from the water.

Other parts of China have also been hit by heavy rain.

Five people were buried by a rain-triggered landslide in Southwest China's Guizhou province, authorities said on Friday.

The accident caused by continuous downpours occurred at about 3 am on Friday in the village of Tianba of Liupanshui city.

Several sections of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway were blocked after a rain-triggered landslide that occurred on Wednesday, local rescuers said on Thursday.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project, handled on Thursday its second flood peak of the year, the dam's managing authority said.

The flood peak arrived with a flow rate of 56,000 cubic meters of water per second, about the same level as the first peak on July 7, the coordination division of the China Three Gorges Corp said.

Data from the division's monitoring equipment showed that the dam's construction units, power units and other facilities were all working properly.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at wangqingyun@chinadaily.com.cn and zhoulihua@chinadaily.com.cn