Natural disaster situation for various types in July this year: crop affected area 86

    The website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs recently published the national disaster situation for July 2014, issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Disaster Reduction Office. Data show that in July, various natural disasters caused a total of 80.125 million person-times to be affected nationwide, 302 deaths, 64 missing, and 2.045 million person-times to be urgently relocated, while 781,000 person-times needed emergency livelihood assistance.

After verification, China's natural disasters in July were mainly typhoons, floods, and droughts, while wind and hail, earthquakes, mountain collapses, landslides, mudslides, forest and grassland fires, and storm surges also occurred to varying degrees. Various natural disasters also caused 107,000 houses to collapse and 911,000 houses to be damaged to varying degrees; the crop affected area was 8,652.8 thousand hectares, of which 943.1 thousand hectares had no harvest; and direct economic losses were 100.66 billion yuan.

Analysis shows that the natural disasters in July presented four characteristics: overall disaster conditions were relatively light, while disaster conditions in some areas were relatively concentrated; historically rare super typhoons caused severe disasters in South China and Yunnan; extreme precipitation events occurred frequently, and flood, wind, and hail losses were severe; and summer and mid-summer droughts in North China, Huanghuai, and other places affected people's lives and autumn grain production.

Compared with the same period of the past ten years, except for direct economic losses, which increased somewhat, all other loss indicators for July disaster conditions decreased. Among them, the number of collapsed houses decreased by more than 70 percent, the number of deaths and missing persons due to disasters decreased by 40 percent, and the number of people urgently relocated and resettled decreased by more than 30 percent.

In July, a total of 2 typhoons made landfall in China. The number of landfalls was the same as the annual average, but the disaster situation was clearly heavier. Direct economic losses ranked first for the same period of the past ten years, and deaths and missing persons, crop no-harvest area, and the number of collapsed and damaged houses were second only to the same period in 2006.

In addition, since the beginning of summer, precipitation has been below normal in parts of the northwest, north China, Huanghuai, the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the southwest. In most of Huanghuai, eastern north China, central and southern Shaanxi, and eastern Gansu, rainfall was more than 20 percent below normal, among which Henan was 60 percent below the same period of normal years, the lowest for the same period since 1961. Entering July, some areas of north China and Huanghuai experienced high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius for many consecutive days, and extreme high-temperature events occurred in many places. Affected by high temperatures and little rain, 13 provinces (autonomous regions) including Inner Mongolia, Henan, Hubei, and Ningxia suffered drought disasters.