Death toll from Bilis hits 204 nationwide
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-07-19 09:38
Six more people in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were
confirmed dead on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from the rainstorms and
flooding triggered by the tropical storm Bilis across China to 204.
The death toll in Guangxi rose to 25 on Tuesday while nine others remained
missing, according to local officials.
In Guangdong, over 4,200 inmates have been rescued from two prisons in
Shaoguan City after floods left them stranded for about two days.
Twenty wardens managed to bring food and water to the inmates evacuated from
one jail on Saturday afternoon when some 30 inmates began to show symptoms of
gastroenteritis and skin diseases.
Two helicopters airdropped 2.1 tons of food, drinking water, medicine and
other supplies on Sunday afternoon after their previous attempts failed due to
bad weather conditions.
The two police helicopters used for the mission also flew 32 people from the
flood-stricken area to safety, including 22 children, four pregnant women, six
injured people and police officers.
The prison administration also rented boats to ship food from urban regions
to the flood-stranded inmates.
No imprisoned people were killed or suffered injuries during the two separate
operations.
In Guangxi 5.86 million people were affected and the economic losses stood at
about 1.21 billion yuan (more than 151 million U.S. dollars).
A total of 369,000 local residents have been relocated to safety after some
17,700 houses were damaged in the disaster.
The local government has provided 5 million yuan (625,000 U.S. dollars) for
disaster relief and some 30 officials have been dispatched to help flood-hit
regions survive the calamity.
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