Floods in June

This item appears on page 18 of the August 2010 issue.

• Prolonged monsoon rains in Myanmar and Bangladesh caused floods and mudslides that killed more than 100 people in mid June. In Rakhine state in northern Myanmar, bridges and a key road were washed away. Landslides destroyed several villages in Myanmar and across the border in the Cox Bazar district of Bangladesh. 

• In southern China’s Jiangxi province, there were over 230 people killed, 109 missing and over 100,000 displaced after the Fu River overflowed its banks and broke through dikes in late June. The floods caused landslides, destroyed about 195,000 thousand houses and damaged roads and railways. Worst hit were the provinces of Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi.

• In Ghana, at least 35 died and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed when a 10-hour downpour on June 20 brought floods near Accra and in central Ghana. A bridge between Ghana and Togo was washed away.

• Heavy rains, flooding rivers and landslides caused havoc in northeast Brazil during mid June. More than 120,000 people were displaced in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco, with a reported 40 people killed and hundreds missing.

Entire villages were swept away by floodwater, and the towns of Barreiros, Branquinha and Rio Largo were heavily damaged by mudslides. Dams, roads, bridges and some railways were destroyed.