China moves 70,000 from quake areas, fearing flood

SANSHUI, China (Reuters) - China has evacuated more than 70,000 people near the epicenter of last month's devastating earthquake to avoid further casualties from landslides and other disasters during the annual flood season.

Rain and floods, concentrated in China's heavily industrialized south, have killed at least 176 people already this year, and left 52 missing, as authorities struggle to shelter millions made homeless by the 7.9 magnitude quake that struck the southwestern province of Sichuan on May 12.

Authorities in Aba prefecture had moved 72,000 people living in "highly dangerous terrain" in Wenchuan county, the epicenter of the quake, to safer areas ahead of downpours on Wednesday night, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.

"The three-day mass relocation concluded at 8 p.m., just two hours before heavy rain hit the county," Xinhua quoted local disaster prevention authorities as saying.

It did not explain why the already devastated area was still home to so many people, whether they were living in tent cities or in homes, or where they would be evacuated to.

Authorities had started to evacuate another nearly 40,000 residents from other regions of the prefecture on Sunday, the report said, without elaborating.

China suffers floods, droughts and other disasters across its huge landmass every year. The State Flood Control and Relief Headquarters said the death toll so far was significantly lower than for similar periods in previous years.

SECONDARY DISASTERS

Since the earthquake struck, killing more than 69,000, Wenchuan county alone had experienced nearly 5,000 "secondary geological disasters", including hundreds of major landslides and mudslides, Xinhua said.

State television showed footage of villagers carrying belongings and picking their way gingerly down steep mountain paths.

The death toll in China's flood season, which has forced the evacuation of about 1.66 million people and damaged or destroyed 9,000 square miles of crop-land, had risen to at least 176 people by Thursday, 50 days before the Olympic Games open in Beijing.

Rainstorms and floods had been recorded in nine provinces, from Yunnan in the far southwest to Zhejiang in the east, where 2,000 people were evacuated in Pingyao city as waters threatened to engulf their roof-tops.

More than 800 residents were trapped and awaiting relief in Liyang, a village in the mountains of the Guangxi region, east of Yunnan, where roads and power lines had been cut since Monday, the China Daily said.

Floodwaters near Foshan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong's Pearl River Delta, were subsiding slowly as rains eased, but teams of engineers and troops remained on standby along the banks of the swollen Beijiang river.

Some economists have said the cost of this year's flooding appears no greater than in previous years, but add that thousands of hectares of lost crops could add to price pressures as China battles inflation that has been driven by soaring food costs over the past year.

(Writing by Ian Ransom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Roger Crabb)