Natural disasters affect 21.78 mln Chinese in 2012

Natural disasters left 66 people dead or missing, and affected some 21.78 million people in the first quarter in the Chinese mainland, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) and National Disaster Reduction Committee in China (NDRC) has said. Natural disasters resulted in direct economic losses of 9.63 billion Yuan (1.53 billion U.S. dollars) from January to March, according to a joint statement issued by the MCA and the NDRC, both the MCA and NDRC said in a statement relayed by the Chinaese news agency Xinhua here Wednesday . Bad weather detrimentally affected more than 2.4 million hectares of crops and caused the collapse or damage of 200,000 homes, the statement said. Drought, extremely low temperatures, snow, quake and landslides were the main natural phenomena during the period, but the overall damage inflicted by the disasters was not as serious as in previous years, the statement said.