China’s Flood Victims Begin Rebuilding Their Future

A torrent of grief and a bundle of joy arrived the same day for Zhao Guangxian. On Aug. 25, his wife gave birth at a local hospital to the couple’s first child while their adobe farmhouse was collapsing, a victim of rushing flood waters.

Nearly six months later, Zhao and his extended family are installed in a new home. Furniture is sparse--the family fled with little save cooking supplies--and their fields are farther away, but Zhao is grateful for a roof over his head.

“Our old house was pretty shabby and dangerous,” said Zhao, 28. “The new place is made of steel, cement and brick, and is a lot more stable.”

Millions of villagers such as Zhao are piecing their lives back together after China’s most devastating floods in nearly half a century, which killed 3,656 people and created $30 billion in damage.

One of the hardest-hit areas was here in the northern part of Hunan province, where 300,000 refugees were forced at one point to encamp on the dikes of Dongting Lake, a catch-basin for the overflowing Yangtze River. Overall, 21 million Hunan residents--one out of every three--were affected by the floods, and as much as 40% of Hunan’s cultivated land lay submerged, provincial officials estimate. Damage in the province totaled $3.9 billion.

The muddy brown water finally receded in November, replaced by swarms of workers and displaced residents engaged in a large-scale recovery effort.

“The biggest relief task is to build homes,” said Deng Lei, an officer with Hunan’s Civil Affairs Department, citing an old saying: A secure dwelling makes for a happy work life.

Construction crews, aided by the flood victims, have erected enough new homes for 95% of the nearly 400,000 households made homeless, Deng said. Officials hope to finish moving in the new tenants by Tuesday, the Chinese New Year.

But this will leave thousands with only flimsy cotton tents as winter temperatures drop to the 30s.

Although Hunan sits in comparatively warmer southern China, a snowstorm blasted through the area in late December.

Just as worrisome for officials is a looming food shortage, because donations and government subsidies provide only enough grain to feed flood victims through April, short of the July rice harvest.

Recovery work has been hampered by the destruction left by the floods, which swept away roads and bridges.

At the time of the floods, military helicopters were summoned to make relief drops to some spots that had been turned into islands, their occupants cut off from the rest of civilization.

“I’m 80 years old,” said Deng Lanyu, who is no relation to Deng Lei, flashing a proud but almost toothless smile. “I’d never seen such a big flood in my life.”

Wearing a Soviet-style worker’s cap and a set of donated clothing, the farmer described how he salvaged only some pots and pans, a wicker chair and a couple of battered wooden wardrobes from his mud-brick home of 69 years.

After making do in the basement of his son’s shop, Deng moved into a new development late last month.

Electricity and clean water are not available to everyone in the development yet. Many residents must walk farther to reach their fields, plots of rich rust-colored earth where they plant rice, garlic, cabbage and other vegetables.

In all, four out of every five households in Deng’s village were either temporarily or permanently displaced by the flood, according to the village chief, Ren Yuesong. Construction of new dwellings is not yet complete; priority for resettlement goes to residents who originally lived near Dongting Lake, just a few miles away.

Not all the new developments are inhabited by people who were previously neighbors. In Zhao’s development, residents come from at least two villages, so they have come up with a new name for their domain: “New Friendship Village.”