China said on April 13 that floods, droughts, earthquakes and frost in the country caused direct economic losses of 23.76 billion yuan (about 3.3 billion USD).
The numbers are compiled in the first quarter of 2024.
China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said economic damage was caused by several cold spells, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, landslides in Yunnan province and floods. on the Yellow River, along with many other natural disasters in this country in the first 3 months of the year, amounted to 3.3 billion USD.
The disasters left 79 people dead, while 110,000 people needed urgent relocation and resettlement, 10.4 million people were affected, across a total of 26 provinces and regions.
A sandstorm in China. (Photo: Reuters)
Other natural disasters include drought in the Southwest – affecting 424,000 hectares of crops, sandstorms in the Northwest, and forest fires in the Southwest and South. A total of 994,300 hectares of crops were affected by natural disasters.
Besides, about 66,000 houses were destroyed or damaged by natural disasters in China in the first 3 months of 2024.
In January 2024, China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said it planned a three-year campaign to address response time issues when disasters and accidents occur, including including production safety failures in sectors such as mining.
Not only natural disasters, many extreme weather phenomena also took place in the first 3 months of the year in China.
At the end of March, a series of weather warnings were issued across the country. While Guangdong province in the south of the country was as hot as summer, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in the north had a serious sandstorm. and Zhejiang province in the East experienced hail and unusually high winds.
In early April, southern China suffered heavy rain. More than 800 people in Guangdong had to evacuate when the “No. 1 flood” occurred on the Pearl River branch, the earliest of the year since the country compiled data in 1998.
The Ministry of Water Resources in Beijing launched a level 4 emergency response and sent a working group to Guangdong to inspect and guide related disaster prevention activities. China has a four-level flood control emergency response system, of which level 1 is the most serious.
In 2023, natural disasters in China caused direct economic losses of up to 345.45 billion yuan (47.7 billion USD), leaving 691 people dead or missing.
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