Tragic start to China's flood season

A rail bridge collapses in the northern province of Shaanxi, one of the areas most severely hit by the rains

BEIJING, China -- Some of China's worst floods in years have killed at least 179 people, left hundreds missing and made thousands more homeless in a devastating start to the wet season.

Worst affected is the northwestern Shaanxi province, where the state Xinhua news agency said 150 bodies have been recovered after torrential rains triggered landslides and burst river banks across 30 counties between Saturday and Monday.

Another 400 people are missing, and the Chinese military have been called in to help with rescue work, said a spokeswoman for the Shaanxi provincial anti-flood center, who only gave her surname, Jiang.

"Casualties will certainly increase as the investigation continues," Jiang told The Associted Press by telephone from Xi'an, the Shaanxi provincial capital.

As many as 80,000 homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, she said, with the rains damaging more than 167,000 hectares (410,000 acres) of farmland, wrecking 29 hydro-power stations and bringing down a railway bridge three minutes after a train had crossed it.

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Thirteen other bridges have also been washed out, according to Jiang.

Floods often plague China in the summer and the current deluge has raised fears of a repeat of 1998, when the most devastating downpour in half a century killed more than 4,000 people and inundated 240,000 square kilometers (92,000 square miles) of farmland in China's rice bowl.

Battered area

In the neighboring southwestern province of Sichuan, 500 km (300 miles) from Shaanxi, at least 27 people were known to have died since rains began battering the area last week, according to the Web site of the Sichuan Daily newspaper.

Around Suining, one of the province's worst-hit areas, 14 people died during rare deluges in which up to 300 mm (12 inches) of rainfall was recorded in one day.

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Some 500 houses collapsed and more than 1,600 hectares of crops were damaged in some of the worst rain in decades to hit the arid northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Faster than usual melting of mountain snow in the relatively impoverished region had exacerbated flooding which caused more than $2.65 million in damage in the Turpan prefecture alone on Friday and Saturday, Xinhua said.

It quoted the Xinjiang flood control office as saying such rainfall had "rarely been seen in the region in recent decades," with poor forest cover adding to the problems.

Areas around Hanzhong, about 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Beijing, were submerged under 1.5 metres (five ft) of water.

Two people were killed and at least 100 were missing in the deluge described as a rare event by an official at the local anti-flood office, state media said.

Special army units

China has been striving to limit the potential of floods to bring chaos and destruction to the country.

The government has banned tree felling, urged farmers to plant trees and pushed ahead with projects like the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, which Beijing says will help control floods.

On Tuesday, Xinhua said the army formed special units to develop special skills to fight torrential floods.

Greenpeace has already warned that China could suffer an 'environmental meltdown' in a report, highlighting the floods along the Yangtze

These units would be responsible for anti-flood activities along seven major rivers including the Yangtze, Yellow, Huai, Hai, Songhua-Liao, Pearl and Min Rivers, it said.

In 1998 when floods hit and destroyed parts of China, about 300,000 soldiers took part in disaster relief but some did not have the proper professional skills and equipment, according to the China Daily newspaper.

China's central provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi have been heavily hit by rain since the beginning of April and some tributaries of China's longest river have risen to levels that are beginning to cause concern.

Although there has been a slight downgrading of the possibility of an El Nino weather effect forming in the Pacific this year, the Chinese are still worried

The last El Nino, which affected China in 1997 brought prolonged droughts and high temperatures in north China in 1998 and catastrophic floods in the Yangtze region.

El Nino weather events, formed by interaction between abnormal Pacific sea temperatures and the atmosphere have wreaked havoc in the past in China.