Those chased from their homes also speak of mismanaged flood systems, lack of government accountability and unequal treatment of the rural poor, who bear most of the flood burden. China’s overreliance on dams, excessive construction in low-lying areas, land reclamation in wetlands and lakes, and cities built with poor drainage systems have all exacerbated flood damage. The flooding, however, is directly linked to man-made problems. The system is abnormally strong this year, said Liu Junyan, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace East Asia, but it is unclear whether it is caused by climate change. The heavy storms over the Yangtze River basin are the result of a western Pacific subtropical high, a pressure system that every summer carries warm air from south to north. With torrential rains, he added, the amount of water concentrated in each reservoir poses a risk of serious damage, even in small dams. “These flood control engineering projects are not a panacea,” said Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. Many were built in the 1950s and ’60s and suffer from poor maintenance. On the same day, more than 16,000 people were trapped in Guzhen town in the same province as the waters surged 10 feet high and broke through levees.įears are intensifying over the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam, where the reservoir has risen 50 feet above the warning level, to its highest point since the dam was completed in 2006.Ĭhina has more than 98,000 dams, according to the Ministry of Water Resources, more than any other nation. Last week, the government blasted open a dam in Anhui. Death tolls and battered homes are fewer than in previous years, but displacement and economic loss are far higher.Ĭhina’s dams - its primary guard against floods - are coming into question as they face increasing strain. The surging waters have destroyed 41,000 houses and damaged 368,000 more, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.
The floods have so far affected more than 54 million people, including 3.7 million displaced and 158 people dead or missing. But this year is the worst in decades, with 433 rivers surging above flood control levels since June, 33 of them setting records. Qiao spoke as many rural residents of the Yangtze River floodplains do, accustomed to swelling waters whenever big rains hit. “We have to think big-picture, think of the greater good,” said the farmer identified as Qiao in a recent local news video from Anhui province. He was one of tens of thousands of villagers whose homes and fields were about to be engulfed as a dam gushed open to release rising waters. so he could harvest his crops before the floods came. Firefighters were using boats to transport trapped residents.The white-haired farmer ran barefoot to his fields at 2 a.m. Images showed flooding had submerged three-metre-high signs and buildings several storeys high.
In Chongqing, roads, bridges, parks and a main highway in the commercial district were flooded, affecting 260,000 people and damaging at least 20,000 businesses, according to officials. On Thursday, levels along the Yangtze near Chongqing reached heights not seen since 1981, when the country experienced its worst floods in a century, leaving 1.5 million homeless. Upstream from the dam, officials in the city of Chongqing, in Sichuan province, evacuated almost 300,000 residents before the flooding. “The standard of construction of the dam is high and it can resist large floods,” it said. This week the ministry of water resources said the standard of construction meant 111 large reservoirs upstream from the dam could help lessen pressure on the structure. The flooding is predicted to last about five days. Officials expect water levels in the reservoir, whose dam was built to withstand a water level of 175 metres, to reach 165.5 metres on Saturday. The Three Gorges dam, which can handle inflows of about 98.8m litres a second, is already approaching its capacity. After two months of heavy floods across central and south-west China, officials have promised the dam can withstand the flows.Ī breach of the dam, a controversial and unprecedented feat of engineering along the Yangtze River, would be embarrassing for China, which took 12 years to build the megaproject, displacing millions and submerging swathes of land.
0 kommentar(er)
