Asia’s flood misery continues unabated

ZHOUQU, China – Rescuers in three countries across Asia struggled Tuesday to reach survivors from massive flooding that has afflicted millions of people, as the death toll climbed in a remote Chinese town where hundreds died and more than 1,100 were missing from landslides.

In Pakistan, the United Nations said the government’s estimate of 13.8 million people affected by the country’s worst-ever floods exceeded the combined total of three recent megadisasters – the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Rescuers in mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir raced to save dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have killed 165.

In China, the death toll jumped to 337 late Monday after Sunday’s landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu – the deadliest incident so far in the country’s worst flooding in a decade. A debris-blocked swollen river burst, swamping entire mountain villages in the county seat of Zhouqu and ripping homes from their foundations.

“There were some, but very few, survivors. Most of them are dead, crushed into the earth,” said survivor Guo Wentao.

The government said 1,148 were missing. About 45,000 were evacuated.

More rain is expected in the region over the next three days, the China Meteorological Administration said.

“We were dumbfounded by the enormity of the flood situation when we got to the scene,” said Chen Junfeng, a disinfection specialist whose army battalion was the first on the scene Sunday.

In Pakistan, two weeks of flooding have killed 1,500.

“The magnitude of the tragedy is so immense that it is hard to assess,” Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said during a visit to the central Pakistani city of Multan.