A fissure stretching about a kilometer appeared Sunday at a village in east China's Fujian Province after days of torrential rain, causing a house to collapse, local source said.
No casualties were reported although 11 other houses near the fissure were damaged, the source said.
Most parts of the fissure in Zhenshan village, Zhangping city, are five cm wide, and in some parts the gap opens to 80 cm.
More than 30 springs also emerged in the village, gushing water with mud and sand and affecting the homes of 95 people in 31 families.
The source cited an old man surnamed Lian as saying that a landslide occurred in the village in 1954 due to continuous rains.
The local government has relocated all the families who lived in the damaged houses on the fissure and dispatched monitoring teams.
Fujian has been subjected to continuous rains that have claimed22 lives and destroyed 19,000 homes, forcing the evacuation of more than 50,000 people, since May 30.
(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2006)