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China Puts Flood Toll at 1,029 as Wet Season Ends |
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| CHINA: September 24, 2004 | ||
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BEIJING - Floods in China killed more than 1,000 people this year, destroyed 650,000 village homes and caused 64.7 billion yuan ($7.82 billion) in direct economic losses, the official Xinhua News agency said.
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China's flood season starts around June and ends in September. Widespread floods in 2002 killed more than 1,500 people. This year's floods killed 1,029 people and affected about 114.7 million people, Xinhua said. China put the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydro-electric project, on alert earlier this month as floods upstream on the Yangtze River in Sichuan province and in the huge Chongqing municipality killed more than 100 people. The dam was built to stop centuries of flooding on the world's third-longest river, which did not overflow as much as in previous years, state media said. John Sparrow, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Beijing, said this year's disasters still showed prevention measures in China needed to be rethought. Large investment in flood-control defenses could help to control big rivers, but remote areas remained vulnerable to climate change and enormous rainfalls, he said.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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