Thunderstorms may add to woes of China's quake survivors

CHINA: Survivors of China's earthquake huddled inside tents near their devastated homes Tuesday as they awaited a predicted thunderstorm, wondering how they would cope.

In Renjiaping, a village near the quake's epicentre in southwest China's Sichuan province, people made homeless by the disaster said their biggest concern now was rains predicted to deluge the area in the days to come.

Wang Sufeng, a 33-year-old woman of the Qiang ethnic minority, that is concentrated in Beichuan county, said the tent her family had been allocated by the army was flimsy and she was worried it would leak. "We have a dozen of us, three generations squeezed into it," she said, gesturing to the light blue tent erected on land outside the collapsed family home. "We have had a lot of help with food and water, and the tent of course, but I think it will ooze water because it is not very good quality," she said.

On the hillside behind Wang's home, members of her extended family were busily digging channels around their more sturdy tents. In the neighbouring province of Guizhou, the rains have already killed nine people and left 11 missing after floods on Monday. Tuesday, AFP