3.5m homeless in China floods

[dArKeR]

More than 3.5 million people have been left homeless by floods ravaging China, the International Federation of Red Cross said on Tuesday as it launched an emergency appeal for help.

"An enormous number of people are living under plastic sheeting or in tents on top of the very dykes whose rupture destroyed their homes and their fields," said Alisdair Henley, head of the Red Cross's delegation in Beijing.

"These people then have to go back and rebuild their lives and livelihoods - and they need all the help they can get."

A Red Cross assessment mission to the worst affected areas in eastern, central and southern China concluded that about 100 million people had been affected in 16 provinces.

Many of them have lost all their belongings and will be unable to return home for several weeks.

Hundreds of people have been killed, and the death toll rises daily.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1390987,00.html

3.5 Million is a lot of people to be in instant misery!

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker

[realFedUp]

1. gads....

sounds like grounds for widespread disease as well as misery.

[David__77]

2. case for Three Gorges...

China has experienced flooding like this regularly over since the founding of modern China. It must be controlled if they are to modernize. I sympathize with the Three Gorges dam project. I hope some take another look at this.

[Interrobang]

3. Sure...

They're still "resettling" the million or so people left homeless from closing the sluices there, so what's another three and a half million more between friends? Allegedly, the Three Gorges project was supposed to *stop* this kind of thing...and I'm sure in the long run, they'll miss the tourist dollars.

Maybe China just needs to stop having the majority of its people living on floodplains, instead. (Can it be that the Chinese government's population control measures, albeit draconian, are actually based on common sense?)

[StevenLee]

4. It seems...

China is not ready for any type of disaster...

[theHandpuppet]

5. Link to Red Cross in China?

Anyone have a link/info where donations can be made to the victims of the flood disaster?