At least 87 infants die as flood hits Chinese school

Monday June 13, 2005

Jonathan Watts in Beijing

Rescue teams continued their search for missing children yesterday after a flash flood engulfed a packed primary school in north-eastern China, killing at least 87 infants and four adults.

According to local media more than 350 children and dozens of teachers were in the school when it was struck by a two-metre-high wall of water in Shalan village, Heilongjiang province, on Friday. Twenty-five people were injured, but their condition was said to be stable.

The final death toll is unclear because the remote area remains partly flooded, state censors have blocked internet reports about the tragedy, and many parents recovered the bodies of their children without reporting the deaths to the authorities.

Newspapers, however, have published pictures of the school half submerged in mud and water.

China Central Television showed vast areas of flooded fields and gaping holes in houses where the walls had been washed away.

"The water kept rising, and we were shouting at the students to hold on to their desks, that they had to hold on and not let go," one teacher said, sobbing from her hospital bed.

"We still haven't found our child," the television showed one man saying. "We only had the one child. A daughter. She was in the fifth grade and had good marks. We still haven't found her."

According to the Xinhua news agency the floods damaged seven villages around Ningan City, ruined 1,333 hectares of farm land, destroyed 55 houses and affected the lives of at least 1,800 villagers.

The state-controlled agency said the cause of the flood was torrential rain. Local commentators on internet bulletin boards claimed a nearby dam had burst, but their comments - along with all other unauthorised reports about the catastrophe - were quickly deleted by government censors.

The Heilongjiang governor, Zhang Zuoji, has reportedly travelled to the site, about 275 miles from the provincial capital of Harbin, to coordinate a rescue and relief force of 1,400 people. Forklifts and mechanical diggers are cleaning out mud and silt. Dozens of police are checking among the ruins and local waterways for more bodies.

With much of its population living in flood plains, China is plagued by summer torrents which kill hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people every year. Last week a prolonged downpour in southern China killed more than 200 people and destroyed nearly 138,000 homes. The local media have warned that more flooding is likely in the coming weeks as weather forecasters predict heavy rains in northern and southern China.