BEIJING, June 23: Heavy floods have slammed into towns across southern China, killing almost 90 people, leaving dozens missing and forcing some 700,000 to run for their lives, state media and residents said on Thursday.

There may be worse to come, with torrential rains forecast to pound the region at least until the end of the week, with damage so far estimated to be worth 4.6 billion yuan ($550 million), Xinhua news agency said.

“The flood waters are enormous. They crashed down like a waterfall and submerged the whole city,” said Liang Kongzheng, a government official in Wuzhou, an industrial city in the Guangxi region where tens of thousands have been evacuated.

“Residents were taken to places higher than 27 metres (90 feet). People are getting around the flooded streets in little boats and flood alarms ring out regularly,” Liang told Reuters by telephone.

The floods have killed 38 people in Guangxi and forced the evacuation of 330,000 to safe ground.

Military planes dropped food, medicine and other urgent supplies to some of Guangxi’s worst-hit counties, with around 10,000 people trapped in areas cut off by flood waters, state television said.

South China is struck by floods nearly every summer, causing enormous loss of life. Deforestation compounds the problem, as torrential rains trigger rock slides and mud flows off bare mountainsides.

Treeless hills were blamed in part for a flash flood that devastated a primary school in northeastern Heilongjiang province earlier this month which killed 117 people — 105 of them children.

“Reckless human activity” made such landslides more likely, Xinhua said.

Wuzhou may face another kind of environmental crisis, one resident said.

Mo Yijun, a doctor, told Reuters he had received phone calls about vehicles containing pesticides being overturned upriver.

“The flood waters are moving fast, so we will be hit quickly. There are rumours that the city’s water supply will be cut off soon,” Mo said.—Reuters