Floods in Southern China Cost 140 Lives, Red Cross Reports

BEIJING — Flooding in southern China, while not as bad as last year’s deluge, has killed more than 140 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes, Red Cross officials said Friday.

At least 20,000 people have been injured, according to Red Cross officials who spent a week in two of the five provinces hit by flooding.

Their estimates of the death toll, based on Chinese Red Cross figures, were substantially lower than the 420 fatalities reported by Chinese newspapers and officials, but the numbers confirmed the huge impact of the annual disaster.

Last year, flooding killed at least 3,000 people, destroyed 1.7 million homes and caused damage estimated at $26.5 billion.

“The Asian flooding season is less severe this year, but that doesn’t mean that the impact on individual villages is any less severe,” said Jon Valfells of the International Red Cross.

Torrential summer rains in southern China are usually accompanied by deadly flooding because centuries of overfarming have stripped the hills of vegetation that would trap rainwater.

While the damage reported in the five southern provinces is on a far larger scale than recent flooding in Eastern Europe, it has received less international attention because officials are reluctant to let foreign reporters visit the areas.