Floods & Landslides Plague China's Sichuan Province

2010-08-18 283

Massive flooding and landslides continue to wreak havoc in southwest China's Sichuan province. Flooding has claimed more than a thousand lives across the country this year alone.

Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall ravaged China's southwest Sichuan Province have claimed at least 15 lives and left 59 others missing Wednesday.

The area was hard hit during a massive earthquake in 2008 which killed at least 80,000 people.

These aerial shots are of Qingping village, where 6 million cubic meters of mud swallowed houses and forced over 5,400 people to flee their homes last week.

Qingping is surrounded by mountains, where the soil had been made unstable after the 2008 earthquake.

Over 400,000 people have been evacuated across the province.

An avalanche of mud roared down the slopes of a mountain late on August 7 after unusually strong rain, killing 1,270 people and hundreds of others still unaccounted for.

More rain is forecast in the coming days, posing a threat of more flooding and landslides.

At least 1,000 people have died in floods in central, southern and northeast China this year alone.