Perilous Times and Climate Change
Worst floods in a decade in China, 30,000 trapped
By CHI-CHI ZHANG
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2010; 11:15 AM
BEIJING -- Floods caused by heavy rains in northeastern China stranded
tens of thousands of residents without power Wednesday, as the worst
flooding in more than a decade continued to besiege many areas of the
country.
Floods this year have killed at least 928 people with 477 missing and
caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, the State Flood Control
and Drought Prevention office reported. More heavy rains were expected
for the southeast, southwest and northeast parts of the country through
Thursday.
About 30,000 residents in Kouqian town were trapped in their homes
after torrential rains drenched the northeastern province of Jilin on
Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Water began
flooding the town after the nearby Xingshan Reservoir and the Wende and
Songhua rivers overflowed and rescue crews were delivering supplies by
boat and moving people to higher ground, state television reported.
Flooding has hit areas all over China. Thousands of workers sandbagged
riverbanks and checked reservoirs in preparation for potential floods
expected to flow from the swollen Yangtze and Han rivers, an official
with the Yangtze Water Resources Commission said Wednesday. He gave
only his surname, Zhang, as is common with Chinese officials.
"Right now, the Han river in Hubei province is on the verge breaching
warning levels," Zhang said.
The Han is expected to rise this week to its highest level in two
decades, Xinhua reported. The flood threat was greater than usual
because the Yangtze, into which the Han flows, was also reaching peak
levels, it said.
Workers were prepared to blast holes in the Han embankment to divert
flood waters into a low-lying area of farms and fish ponds, from which
more than 5,000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said.
Although China experiences heavy rains every summer, flooding this year
is the worst in more than a decade because the flood-prone Yangtze
River Basin has seen 15 percent more rain than in an average year, Duan
Yihong, director of the National Meteorological Center, said in a
transcript of an interview Wednesday posted on the Xinhua website.
"Rains should begin to slow down in August, but it is hard to predict
now what exactly will happen, said Duan. "We have to be vigilant and
closely monitor the weather ... do a better job of forecasting."
Thousands of rescuers in central China's Henan province searched for
survivors Wednesday after a bridge collapsed from heaving flooding in
the Yi River over the weekend, killing 37 people with 29 missing,
Xinhua reported.
Floods have also put China's massive Three Gorges Dam to the test. On
Wednesday morning, the dam's water flow reached 1.96 million cubic feet
(56,000 cubic meters) per second, the biggest peak flow this year, with
the water level reaching 518 feet (158 meters), Xinhua said, about 10
percent less than the dam's maximum capacity.
Chinese officials have for years boasted the dam, the world's largest
hydroelectric project, would end centuries of devastating floods along
the Yangtze.
Around China, a total of 875,000 homes have been destroyed, 9.61
million people evacuated, and 22 million acres (8.76 million hectares)
of crops ruined in this year's flooding, according to the state flood
control office.
China's worst flooding in recent years occurred in 1998, when 4,150
people were killed, most along the Yangtze.