The families of schoolchildren killed in last
Friday's devastating flood in northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province are to receive 150,000 yuan (US$18,200) in
compensation, a local government spokesperson
announced?Tuesday night.
Latest figures as at 3:30
PM?yesterday?show that at least 95 schoolchildren and
four other villagers were killed in the disaster.
According to spokesperson Wang Tongtang, 10 students are still
missing, and the death toll could rise further as previously
unreported deaths are being recorded.
Xue Lingguo, whose eight-year-old daughter was killed, said the
official head count didn't include his daughter because the couple
buried her themselves.
He estimated at least 10 more children killed in the flood had
not yet been included in the official count.
Meanwhile, the search for the missing continues.
More than 4,500 military personnel from nearby counties, helped
by sniffer dogs, joined the rescue efforts.
Power was restored yesterday but not clean water. Rescue team
headquarters dispensed bottled water to residents.
Also yesterday, there were conflicting reports about the two
people initially held responsible for the tragedy.
Huang Mingjun, Party secretary of Shalan, and Li Zuoyu, head of
the local police station, were released from custody yesterday,
according to a local official in charge of search and rescue
coordination.
But Jing Dianyuan, executive vice mayor of Mudanjiang, told
China Daily that investigations were ongoing and that the
two, who have been accused of negligence, remain in custody.
Wang said 161 pupils, who survived the fatal disaster, went back
to school on Tuesday.
The local government has allocated 65,000 food ration items and
35,000 kilograms of flour to the disaster-hit areas.
Some experts were dispatched to the frontlines to help farmers
resume their farming work.
Twenty-one medical teams have also been mobilized to be on
standby in the disaster zone in the event of plagues or
epidemics.
In another development, Zhang
Zuoji,?governor of Heilongjiang Province, has asked the
central government to give him an administrative sanction on
account of his subordinates' alleged negligence.
Zhang made the remarks when concluding a meeting on Sunday
evening.
Saddened by the "sudden tragedy," Zhang said he was willing to
face any disciplinary penalties from the central government.
"I ask the central government to give me sanctions," he said,
claiming that the provincial government, with him as the head,
should be held to account for responsibilities that are
"unshirkable."
"As the chief leader of the provincial government, I would do
that," he said.
According to earlier reports, some local villagers complained
that when the flash flood occurred, they made reports to Shalan
township government and the local police station, but didn't
receive a response.
Before the flood reached Shalan, Zheng Changhui, Party secretary
of Hesheng Village on the upper reaches of the Shalan River, had
called the Shalan government and its police station to issue a
flood warning, only to find that no one answered the phone at the
government and a policeman saying they could do nothing since
"everyone was out," reported China Daily on Tuesday.
"If someone had answered the phone or if enough importance had
been attached to the warning, the tragedy might not have happened,"
the paper quoted a mother who lost her eight-year-old daughter as
saying.
Zhang Lijie, a teacher with the Shalan Town Central Primary
School, said she at first received a call from a Shalan middle
school teacher, who said the floodwaters were headed toward her and
urged her to evacuate, according to Tuesday's Beijing
News.
"But it was too late," she said. "The floodwaters broke through
the school's walls and the classroom was filled with yellow water
immediately."
"Some of my students held on tightly to window sills and some
climbed out the windows," Zhang said.
"Some climbed up over firewood stacks, some over a tractor in
the playground and some merely went missing," she said.
She lost seven of her students to the flood.
Seven out of the 18 villages in Ning'an City have been
devastated by the floods. About 1,333 hectares of farmland were
ravaged, 55 houses damaged and 1,800 villagers' lives affected.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency June 15,
2005)