As of Sunday morning, more than 10 million people in south China's nine provinces have been affected by severe floods, the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFCDRH) said Sunday. Mud flows and floods triggered by the intense rainstorms that started mid-June have left 132 people dead and 86 missing and prompted the evacuation of 280,000 people in nine provinces, including Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces, according to Xinhua. The havoc has brought total economic losses in the nine provinces to 14.5 billion yuan (2.1 billion U.S. dollars) and affected 535,500 hectares of crops and led to the collapse of 68,000 houses. The office urged local governments to boost anti-flood measures to keep losses to a minimum. The office and the nation's Ministry of Water Resources dispatched three teams of experts to the provinces of Guizhou, Zhejiang and the municipality of Chongqing Sunday to aid local authorities to fight the floods, said Zhang Zhitong, vice director of the office.
