World Jun. 19, 2008 - 04:41AM JST ( 1 )

BEIJING —

Surging waters in southern China’s swollen Pearl river delta threatened millions of people on Wednesday as authorities raced to finish the evacuation of 110,000 people in the quake-hit southwest.

Although a huge flood crest flowed past the Makou monitoring station close to the city of Guangzhou on Tuesday, water levels remained 0.45 meters above warning levels a day later, the state flood headquarters said on its website.

The headquarters said the deluge of water that roared by the station was the biggest in 50 years and had prompted emergency measures to protect millions of people in the delta, home to China’s huge export industry.

Up to 176 people have died and 52 have gone missing in flood-related incidents in China this year, with 51 dead or missing since June 6 in the provinces and regions of Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hunan, it said.

But state media did not agree on the toll, with some reports saying more than 200 people were dead or missing from the June weather in what appeared to be tabulations made from late breaking local news reports.

One such report by Xinhua news agency in the Guangxi region said four students were killed and 12 injured when a school collapsed Monday evening in Liubao township.

Another report on Wednesday said five children in Guangxi’s Bobai county were swept into a river as they walked home from school, with only three bodies found so far.

Up to 3,000 schools in Guangxi have been damaged due to the flooding, Xinhua added.

Since the rainy season began in late May, rains have deluged large swathes of southern China, while the northeast of the country is experiencing the complete opposite in the form of an unusual heatwave, according to Xinhua.

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province usually known as the “Ice City”, reported an abnormally high temperature of 37.1 degrees Celsius Tuesday—the second highest in the city’s history, Xinhua said.

But quake-hit Sichuan province, where millions of refugees are living in tents and makeshift shelters, was not so lucky.

According to the Beijing News, the evacuation of up to 110,000 quake refugees from dangerous mountainous areas threatened by rain-induced landslides in Aba prefecture was slated to finish Wednesday.

The operation began days ago on the orders of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, and included up to 70,000 quake refugees in Aba’s Wenchuan county, the epicenter of the May 12, 8.0-magnitude earthquake, reports said.

Up to 87,000 people were reported killed or missing after the massive quake, with as many as five million left homeless.

More than 1.66 million people have been evacuated in the areas hardest hit by the rains, with large tracts of farmland under water and losses totaling 14.5 billion yuan ($2.1 billion), the civil affairs ministry said Tuesday.

Officials also warned that the north could fall victim to the weather, and the government has urged the strengthening of dykes and reservoirs along the Yellow River, known as the “cradle of Chinese civilisation” and home to millions of urban dwellers and farmers.

In the south in Guangdong and the neighboring Guangxi region, the rains have either swamped hundreds of roads or left them cut off by landslides.

Thousands of transport trucks have been stranded in both provinces, cutting off food supplies to urban centers and fueling price rises, reports said.

The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s economic planner, issued orders Wednesday to curb price gouging in the flood-hit areas.

Wire reports