At least 160 hidden deaths in a central Chinese province pushed the death toll to 482 from floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Bilis over the past week, state media said on Friday.
Hunan provincial officials raised the number of deaths there to 346, up from 92 earlier on Friday, and said 89 others remained missing, the official Xinhua news agency said.
After a report on Thursday by China Central Television (CCTV) alleging hidden deaths in Hunan’s Zixing city, the ministry of civil affairs on Friday said it had instructed officials at all levels to give ”fast and accurate” reports on casualties and disaster-relief operations.
In a statement posted on its website, the ministry gave implicit support for the CCTV report, saying it gave an ”improved reflection of the disaster relief-work situation in the affected areas”.
CCTV said Zixing officials had reported 39 dead or missing but its reporters found evidence of more than 200 dead or missing. The broadcaster said there was ”no possibility” of survivors being found more than five days after floods hit the area.
Zixing lies close to the Xiangjiang, one of several rivers where officials reported the worst floods in 100 years.
CCTV reporters visited one isolated village in Zixing’s Pingshi county, where villagers said 70 to 80 people were dead or missing.
Floods and landslides destroyed at least 31 000 homes in Huanan, earlier reports said.
In its latest bulletin on the floods, the civil affairs ministry said 149 people were still listed as missing in the six southern and central provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi.
Another flash flood killed at least eight more people and left 27 missing as it swept away road workers’ huts on Thursday in the south-western province of Yunnan in an area close to Guangxi and Vietnam.
The ministry said three million people nationwide had been evacuated before or during the floods and more than 28-million people were affected in the six provinces since Bilis hit land in south-eastern China last weekend.
Floods and landslides caused by Bilis destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left damage estimated at 20-billion yuan ($2,5-billion), it said.
More deaths were confirmed in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, bringing the total number of deaths there to 63 and 30, respectively.
The provincial vice-governor ”seriously criticised” the head of Guangxi’s Pubei county this week for failing to respond properly to flood warnings, the semi-official China News Service said. At least 13 people died and five were missing in Pubei, the agency said.
In recent years, China’s ruling Communist Party has begun to hold local party and government officials personally responsible for major accidents or natural disasters in areas under their jurisdiction, prompting some officials to try to hide or under-report casualties.
Bilis slammed the Philippines and Taiwan before reaching China. It killed at least 14 people and left seven missing in the Philippines and killed at least four people in Taiwan. — Sapa-dpa