Wuhan in central China is on high alert as waters level in the
Yangtze River reach dangerous heights in the city, a state media
reported Thursday.
Xinhua News Agency said officials in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, have ordered stepped up
patrols along dikes and sluice gates in the city of 9.1 million
people.
Sand bags have been prepared for possible breaches and drills on
closing up breaches will be held on Thursday and Friday, Xinhua
said.
Since the start of the annual rainy season in May, floods have
hit nearly half of China's regions and killed at least 400 people,
Xinhua said.
It said the water level in the Yangtze rose to 25.07 meters (82
feet) early on Thursday, its highest level this year. The danger
level is 27.3 meters (90 feet).
The level is expected to keep rising in the next several days,
Xinhua quoted local officials as saying. The regular level of the
river was not given.
Warnings were also issued Thursday for central Hunan province,
where 15,000 government workers and 260,000 residents were guarding
dikes and sluice gates.
About 870 kilometers (540 miles) of dikes in the province are
saturated by dangerously high waters, Xinhua said. More heavy rains
are expected and parts of the province could be hit by
typhoons.
In eastern Jiangsu province, government officials were
predicting that the Huaihe River would remain at dangerously high
levels for at least 10 days, Xinhua said.
A senior Commerce Ministry official said the government had
released meat from reserves to help people living in flooded
areas.
"Some areas of the country have suffered serious flooding and
pork supplies are tight. So after the Commerce Ministry discussed
with other government departments, we decided to use the meat
reserve," said Fang Aiqing, head of the ministry's market
operations department.
Fang's comments were posted Thursday on the central government's
Web site.
Summer is peak rainy season in China, where millions of people
in the central and southern part of the country live on farmland in
flood plains.
Flooding and typhoons killed 2,704 people in China last year,
according to the China Meteorological Administration. That was the
second-deadliest year on record after 1998, when summer flooding
claimed 4,150 lives.
(China Daily July 27, 2007)
