Supplies For Flood Victims Running Low

Medicine and water purification chemicals are running out in flood-stricken northern China, even as disease increases among the flooding victims, a Red Cross official said Tuesday.

The three- to six-mile-wide flood plain of the Yellow River still lies under 2-yard-deep water along the border of Henan and Shandong provinces, nearly two weeks after torrential rains ended, said Ron Kuban, who is assessing flood damage in China for the Red Cross.

Villages built in the flood plain on raised soil berms have become “isolated islands,” Kuban said.

Some villages collapsed when the river jumped its banks, inundated the flood plain with 5 yards of water and undermined the berms, he said.

After lashing the southern half of the country for much of July, torrential rains hit northern provinces in August. About 3,000 people have been killed nationwide, 246 of them in Henan and 24 in Shandong.