CHENGDU: Floods and related disasters in Southwest China's Sichuan Province in the first seven months of the year have left 163 people dead and 33 missing, the provincial disaster relief office said yesterday.

More than 73 million people from 171 cities, counties and districts have been affected, it said.

About 190,000 head of livestock have been lost and some 130,000 houses have been destroyed. More than 4.1 million hectares of crops have been affected and 257,733 hectares have produced no yield at all.

The direct economic loss attributed to the floods is estimated at about 13 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), more than 7.5 billion yuan of which came from agricultural losses, Liu Jing, an official with the office, said.

Abnormal weather conditions, like the heavy rainfall last month, are to blame for several natural disasters in the province this year, she said.

Storms began to hit Sichuan on July 2 and many counties reported more than 100 mm of rain. Four recorded more than 400 mm, with Nanjiang county topping the list with 542 mm.

The downpours caused floods in many areas and triggered nearly 2,000 landslides and mud-rock flows, Liu said.

More than 150,000 people in Qujiang, the seat of eastern Sichuan's Quxian county, escaped early morning floods on July 7 thanks to timely warnings delivered by mobile-phone text messages, loudspeakers and door-to-door visits.

In addition, the heavy rains have resulted in the biggest invasion of plant hoppers in Sichuan since 1991.

The insects have so far invaded 346,667 hectares of paddy fields in 85 cities and counties in the province.

"If the rains continue, there might be an outbreak of plant hoppers across the province in August," Wang Mingtian, deputy director of the Sichuan agricultural weather center, said.

(China Daily 08/02/2007 page4)