Yangtze floods prompt call for public order amid lootingAugust 12, 1998 - Web posted at: 3:57 a.m. EDT
BEIJING (CNN) -- Chinese authorities have issued new calls to enforce order in areas stricken by China's worst flooding in 44 years, warning that looters and thieves preying on relief supplies would be severely punished. Cities in central Hubei and Jiangxi provinces were calm but on alert after a flood crest, the fourth this year, surged down the Yangtze River on Tuesday, further taxing levees sodden by more than a month of flooding. Orders by the Communist Party to ensure stability reinforce indications that authorities are struggling to prevent anarchy in areas that have been inundated for weeks. Police and militia have stepped up patrols around railheads and storehouses of relief supplies to protect the large accumulation of goods brought in to aid the flood effort, the official Legal Daily announced Wednesday. Looting of houses and public buildings abandoned during the floods waters must also be closely guarded against, it said. 'Don't go lightly' on punishment"Punish severely those deserving punishment, don't go lightly. Secure order in disaster areas," the paper said, quoting a circular issued by the party Tuesday. Previous directives warned police to guard against food riots or fights over distribution of relief supplies, and deputized civilians have been organized into safety patrols. State media have reported several arrests for livestock stealing and burglary in flooded areas. Several Communist Party officials have also been punished for dereliction of flood prevention duties. More than 2,000 people have died and millions have been made homeless in the worst flooding since 1954, brought on by unusually heavy seasonal rains. More flooding wreaks havoc in northeastRising flood waters course through the small town of Zhu Jia Hu, south of the industrial town of Wuhan | |||
In the northeast, floods left 14 dead, 20 missing and more than 17,300 stranded, official media reported on Wednesday.
About 760,000 people had been affected by floods in Inner Mongolia, the China Economic Times reported, as water levels along the Yangtze river in central China started to recede.
Flood waters from the Hulin river in Inner Mongolia have stranded 15,000 since Monday, the China Daily said without giving details.
A burst dike on the nearby Nen river trapped another 2,300, the newspaper said.
The Beijing Youth Daily said 23 tourists from Beijing, 60 armed police and an undetermined number of local residents were trapped without food, potable water or medicine in Inner Mongolia's Jirem prefecture.
At least one air-rescue mission has been attempted in the Jarud division of the prefecture, the newspaper said.
Four military aircraft were dispatched from Beijing to drop food, medicine and more than 10 rubber rafts on the site, the newspaper said.
"Of the group, which includes elderly people and children, seven or eight people have collapsed from exhaustion and sickness," it said.
One prefecture Communist Party official and a military commander were among the stranded, the newspaper said. Officials reached by telephone declined to comment.
The Yangtze in many areas has exceeded historical high levels and is forecast to remain swollen for several more weeks. Torrential rains upriver in Sichuan province could trigger yet another flood crest, the official newspaper China Daily reported.
Flash floods have killed 34 people and injured 69 in Sichuan over the past 10 days, the paper reported.
Water levels fell slightly Wednesday in the industrial center of Wuhan.
In Huamei county, across the river from the city of Jiujiang in eastern Jiangxi province, homes and factories were flooded up to the first floor level in a 990-foot (300-meter) swath between the river and a major dike that has held.
Thousands of residents were flooded out of their homes in Jiujiang on Friday when a dike burst, and large parts of the city of 500,000 remained under water.
Dysentery and infections from polluted water are rife among refugees, but Chinese authorities have been well prepared to prevent outbreaks of disease, according to Red Cross teams who have travelled in flood-stricken areas.
Some outbreaks have been reported, but were quickly controlled, the Health Ministry's official newspaper, Health Daily, reported. It did not name the types of disease discovered. Millions of flood victims are living in makeshift shelters amid brutally hot and humid weather.
Flooding has been blamed in part on a weather pattern that has created conditions eerily similar to 1954, when 30,000 died in floods along the Yangtze, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted meteorologist Chao Jiping as saying.
NEXT