Natural disasters kill 379 in first half of 2015
Xinhua, July 9, 2015 Adjust font size:
Natural disasters killed 379 people and left 56 missing in China in the first six months this year, according to a government report published on Thursday.
Disasters resulted in direct economic losses of 89.24 billion yuan (14.59 billion U.S. dollars), forced 1.68 million people to evacuate from their homes and resulted in the collapse of 107,000 houses, said the report posted on the website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The natural disasters included rainstorms, floods, hail, drought and earthquakes, according to the report.
A total of 6.8085 million hectares of crops were affected by drought, flooding and snow, and 610,000 of them went unharvested, it said.
The report said "the situation of disasters in the first half of 2015 was less-severe than the same period from 2004 to 2014, excluding 2008."
From January to June, the Chinese mainland did not see any earthquakes above 6.0-magnitude or above, but had 10 above 5.0-magnitude, mainly in Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang. Endi