POST-DISASTER reconstruction work will start soon and is expected to be completed next year after part of Shandong Province was hit by one of the most serious flooding events in decades, the provincial Party chief has said.

Triggered by Tropical Storm Yagi and Typhoon Rumbia, rainstorms started wreaking havoc in Shandong on Aug. 18. Flooding killed 26 people in the province and caused direct economic losses of 22.2 billion yuan (US$3.2 billion).

In Weifang alone, flooding affected 68,600 hectares of vegetable fields and damaged 270,000 greenhouses. The city suffered direct economic losses of over 10 billion yuan.

In the past two weeks, disaster relief work focused on draining water and clearing trash.

Liu Jiayi, Party secretary of Shandong Province, said at a meeting in Jinan, capital of Shandong, on Thursday that efforts will be made to rebuild facilities and restore production.

“Plans should especially be made early to make sure the affected people could spend the winter in a safe, warm place,” he said.

At present, agricultural production is being restored in parts of Shandong Province. At Shouguang’s Songjia Zhuangzi Village, one of China’s major vegetable bases, farmer Zhao Xiuhua, 43, was trimming the eggplant seedlings in her greenhouse. The seedlings have grown to about 20 centimeters in the soft earth, covered by rice husks.

“This greenhouse had very few losses, thanks to draining the water in time. My other three greenhouses are almost done draining, and I will replace the damaged plants with eggplant and bell peppers as soon as possible,” Zhao said.

As of Thursday, more than 90,000 greenhouses in Weifang, which administers Shouguang, had been repaired. Damaged vegetables on nearly 4,860 hectares of planting area had been replaced with new plants, said Yu Guoan, vice governor of Shandong and head of the province’s relief and reconstruction office at a news conference Friday. (China Daily)