Sodden China battles to repair flood defences

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: China scrambled Sunday to repair water defences shattered by relentless rain, state media said, after flood-related disasters claimed the lives of 235 people this month. Officials in Jiangxi province said a major dyke that broke last week when the river running through Fuzhou city burst its banks, forcing the evacuation of 1.3 million people, had been fixed, the Xinhua news agency said.

The breach was fixed "following around-the-clock repair efforts by hundreds of people", which would allow about 100,000 of the evacuees to return home sooner than expected, it said. Another, smaller breach was still being worked on, Xinhua said.

Days of torrential rain in parts of eastern, central and southern China have affected 68.7 million people in 22 regions, the news agency cited the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters as saying. Rain continued to fall over the weekend on the hard-hit provinces and regions of Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as in Jiangxi….

Flooding along the Gangjiang River in Jiangxi on June 21, shot by Alancrh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license