As clean-up operations geared up, the full extent of the devastation looks likely to run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Particularly badly hit were the already struggling farmers whose livelihoods are precarious at the best of times.

Authorities in Hebei Province, which neighbors SARS-blighted Beijing, have promised emergency funds to help those worse affected.

The hailstone storm, which struck on Sunday, injured a number of people, uprooted thousands of trees and destroyed at least 40,000 hectare of crops in several counties across the province.

Sources with Pingshan County said of the 23 villages worst affected by the storm, nine were very badly hit.

The nine worst hit had in excess of 8,000 hectares of crops damaged by the hailstone bombardment, with a third totally destroyed.

The powerful winds that accompanied the hailstorm uprooted 6,300 large trees across the county and damaged, to varying degrees, 190,000 others.

Distraught farmer Zhao Fa, from Zhaojiaan village lost nearly half of his flock of 100 sheep.

Another farmer, whose family's sole means of support comes from breeding foxes, faces ruin after 80 of his 100 animals were killed. The direct economic loss he and his family suffered is around 30,000 yuan (US$3,600).

The average net income of farmers in China last year was 2,476 yuan (US$300).

Village official Yan Jianguo said 90 per cent of the village's crops were destroyed by the storm and 25 people were injured.

Lingshou County was another major casualty of the hailstorm.

Half of the 16 villages in the county will have nothing to harvest later this year, their crops totally wiped out, while the remainder face major shortfalls.

With the money earned from the sale of their crops the only staple source of income for the county, Feng Lin, a county official said the year ahead would be very difficult for farmers to get through without government help.

(China Daily May 14, 2003)