More than eight million at risk as giant lake rises
More than 700,000 people have been evacuated from areas threatened by flooding around a huge lake in central China, but more than eight million are at risk, officials said today.
Lake Dongting, which covers an area bigger than Luxembourg, is swelling toward crisis point, and more than one million people have been mobilised in Hunan province to shore up dykes.
Quickly rising waters have already swamped towns on the shores of the vast lake.
Around the lake, a reported 8.2 million people are at risk, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Almost 1,000 people have been reported killed by floods since China’s summer rainy season began in June. More than a quarter of those deaths have been in densely populated Hunan.
Chinese Red Cross officials in the province are appealing to other regions for tents, food and other supplies, a spokeswoman said.
“There is an emergency to replenish the supplies to help new victims,” she said. Red Cross warehouses in Hunan are already running low after 100,000 people were displaced by floods in June.
Around Lake Dongting, 940,000 labourers, 15,000 soldiers and more than 100,000 members of the paramilitary militia are hard at work protecting flood dykes, state-run media said.
It said another 10,000 soldiers were on stand-by for flood relief work.
Television pictures showed long lines of workers throwing sandbags on the embankments, while trucks unloaded large stones and chunks of concrete onto the dykes.
Flooding in Hunan has destroyed 27,000 houses and damaged 67,000 more, the Civil Affairs Ministry said in Beijing.
Rains in the area stopped early on Wednesday and authorities said they did not expect any more in the next few days.
Authorities are struggling to protect six cities in Hunan, including the provincial capital of Changsha, and dozens of villages that they say are threatened by rising rivers and lakes.
Adding to the flood danger, the Yangtze, which connects with Dongting, has hit flood levels in several sections near the lake, state media said.
In the lakeside town of Zhongzhou, local men were posted in tents on top of the earthen dykes, making periodic “danger checks” for leaks.
“These are our homes. We have to protect them,” said farmer Yang Yang.
