Floods cut tap water supply in NE China city
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Torrential rains have damaged water pipelines leaving 300,000 people without tap water for two days in Tonghua, an industrial city in northeast China's Jilin Province, officials said Monday.
More than 300 workers had been mobilized to restore the water supply, said Wang Ruimin, head of the public utility bureau in Tonghua. But he gave no deadline as to when the supply would be resumed.
Residents had largely relied on bottled water over the past 48 hours and authorities ordered 25 fire trucks to deliver water for domestic purposes, aside from drinking, to residential communities in the city from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. everyday.
About 1,700 tons of water had been delivered this way, officials said.
Flood water had gushed into Tonghua's water plant at the Changliu Reservoir after a section of the embankment was breached Saturday. Four water pipelines had been damaged since Sunday, cutting supplies to the whole city, Wang said.
The city authorities were working to ensure adequate supplies of bottled water and had vowed to crack down on price manipulation.
Floods and rain-triggered landslides have left more than 100 people dead or missing in Jilin Province over the past week, provincial civil affairs officials said Sunday.
Jilin is the latest Chinese province plagued by floods, after torrential rains have lashed the area since Wednesday.
About 37,000 houses had collapsed and 125,000 others had been damaged while 592,000 residents had been evacuated, the provincial civil affairs department said in its latest disaster update Sunday.
Water supply disruptions were also reported in cities of Baishan, Huadian and Antu County in the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Yanbian.
Vegetable supplies in Baishan City were limited in marketplaces. Much of the farm produce had been damaged by the floods, said vendors.
In Antu County, many townships had suffered blackouts as floods had damaged power facilities.
The extent of destruction became clearer Monday as rescuers and reporters reached the worst-hit areas in the province.
In Huadian City, near Songhua Lake, five villages, with some 14,100 inhabitants, lost their homes when a reservoir burst.
About 4 million cubic meters of water gushed out of the Dahe Reservoir on July 28, local officials said.
Part of Dahe, the village closest to the reservoir, was obliterated, reduced to a rock-dotted riverbank. Houses were washed away and crops completely destroyed.
"I still remember the roar of the flood when it hit the village. It still haunts me," said Wang Chunliang, a villager who used a video-camera to capture the devastation.
Local officials said more than 20 villagers were killed by the burst reservoir flood. In Huadian, a total of 46 people were dead or missing as of Sunday night, according to official statistics.
About 23 bridges in Antu collapsed or had been rendered dangerous by the floods.
Towns were isolated for days as transport links had been severed. Rescuers on Monday struggled for hours to get around mountains to reach the hard-hit town of Liangjiang of Antu.
But authorities said the worst might not be over as heavy rains are forecast to pound the flooded areas from late Tuesday to Friday, with the heaviest rainfall expected to reach 120 millimeters.
As of Monday morning, 10 out of 18 large reservoirs in the province had opened their sluices, releasing pressure that could lead to further breaches.
Authorities warned of landslides and mud flows in the southern part of the province where the soil was saturated from rain water.
In Dandong city, neighboring Liaoning Province, the rains have disrupted water supplies to more than 12,000 households.
The torrential rain made the Yalu River, the main water source for Dandong, too turbid for the water plant to purify. The city was about 60,000 tonnes short of its daily demand.
The authorities have cut supplies temporarily and arranged water deliveries by fire trucks.
Also in Liaoning, 72,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Fushun City. Villager Zhang Jiang, 45, said his home was flooded early Saturday and all the family appliances were destroyed.
