Chinese authorities were warned against cover-ups on Saturday after the death toll from Tropical Storm Bilis more than doubled overnight. A week after Bilis made landfall, the official number of people killed in gales and floods was given at 518, nearly 300 more than the 228 previously reported, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
“Officials who try to hide the death toll will be punished,” the agency said, citing the government of Hunan, the central province that bore the brunt of the destruction brought about by Bilis.
Hunan on Friday revised the province’s number of fatalities dramatically upwards to 346, compared with 92 previously, with some evidence the difference was partly to be blamed on cover-ups.
Pingshi town, one of the worst affected areas, had only reported 39 dead and missing, but a TV team had found the actual number to be three times as large, the China Daily newspaper said on Saturday.
“The statistics shocked me, too,” said Zhao Baojun, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs in charge of gathering data about casualties from Bilis.
The ministry has sent an investigative team to Hunan, and also issued a notice warning against hiding the true extent of the damage.
“Those who are responsible for covering up the death toll and the number of missing people will be held accountable,” the notice said, according to the China Daily.
Chinese officials at the local level are known to often instinctively cover up bad news, for fear of being punished.
In the case of natural disasters, that fear may be exacerbated if preparations for emergencies turn out to have been inadequate.
Luo Xiwu, deputy head of the Communist Party in the region which includes Pingshi, said officials may have been too busy saving lives to count the number of casualties.
“The officials did not shift their work focus from rescue and relief to death toll head-count and damage investigation until the rainstorms stopped and the floods receded,” Luo told Xinhua.
Zhan Xiao’an, director of Hunan provincial flood control headquarters, told Xinhua power supply, and communication and traffic systems in some flooded areas had not been resumed.
A preference among Hunan farmers to live near rivers and mountains was partly to blame for the large death toll in the province, Zhan said.
Tropical Storm Bilis, which also claimed lives in the Philippines and Taiwan, has left a path of death and destruction since making landfall in China a week ago.
Preliminary statistics showed 99 were confirmed dead in the southern province of Guangdong, according to Xinhua. This figure included 36 more fatalities reported on Saturday.
Xinhua also reported 30 dead in the southern region of Guangxi, and 43 in south-eastern Fujian province.
More typhoons or tropical rainstorms are expected to hit China this year, partly due to the warm ocean current in the northwestern Pacific and high temperatures in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, meteorologists have warned. – AFP