By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: August 22, 2010
SHANGHAI — More than 250,000 people were evacuated in northeastern China over the weekend after torrential rains battered the area and led to severe flooding along the border with North Korea, Chinese state media reported on Monday.
The New York Times
Rains led to some of the worst flooding in decades in eastern China.
The government said that four people were killed and one was missing near the port city of Dandong in the northeastern province of Liaoning after some of the worst flooding to hit the region in decades.
Emergency crews worked beginning Saturday into Sunday to move the estimated 253,500 people, the Xinhua news agency reported.
China has been suffering from severe flooding in various parts of the country for months, and is still trying to cope with massive mudslides that killed at least 1,400 people this month in Gansu Province, in the northwestern part of the country.
The heavy rains in North China over the weekend flooded the Yalu River, which separates China from North Korea, forcing the river to breach its banks, China’s state-run news media reported.
In North Korea, flooding submerged much of Sinuiju. The North Korean state-run media said Sunday that the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, had mobilized military forces to rescue and evacuate thousands of North Koreans from floods that hit Sinuiju, the isolated country’s major trading gate on its border with China.
The North’s Korean Central News Agency said that about a foot of rain had fallen around Sinuiju from midnight until 9 a.m. Saturday. The agency reported “severe damage” and said that 5,150 people had been evacuated to higher ground. It reported no deaths.
Sinuiju forms a vital lifeline for the North’s impoverished economy. Much of the country’s land traffic with China, its main trading partner, travels trough Sinuiju.
Since the mid-1990s, North Korea’s agricultural sector has often been devastated by both floods and drought. After decades of denuding its hills for firewood, North Korea remains vulnerable to landslides and flash floods.
In the Chinese province of Liaoning, the floodwaters damaged five border cities, destroying or damaging thousands of homes and buildings and causing at least $100 million in losses, the government said.
The heavy rains began pounding Liaoning Province on Thursday and did not let up until Saturday. But, the government said Sunday, another wave of heavy rains was expected to worsen the situation.
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