Society

Floods cut tap water supply in NE China city

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-08-02 23:15

TONGHUA - 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.

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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 am to 8 pm 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.