Surging waters in the Yangtze River tested the strength of the Three Gorges Dam early yesterday, as some of the fastest-flowing floodwaters in more than a decade slammed against the world’s largest hydroelectric project, according to official Chinese news reports.
The volume of water at Three Gorges reached nearly 70,000 cubic meters per second yesterday morning, 20,000 more than during floods in 1998 that killed 4,150 people.
The authorities have been scrambling to evacuate towns and villages along the path of the flood. For days, residents have been trodding along muddy roads in the region, abandoning their homes with little more than spare clothing stuffed into plastic bags.
Emergency workers have been piling sandbags along the banks of the Yangtze and draining reservoirs.
The river has been swollen by a week of heavy rains that swept through southwest China, after months of record drought in the region.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said the death toll from the summer storms was at least 146, with 40 people missing, though it was unclear what kinds of episodes were included in these statistics.
During construction of the Three Gorges Dam, Chinese officials said the project would help control a Yangtze that annually floods long stretches of its middle and lower sections.
On Monday morning, confronted with the dangerous waters, engineers raised the discharge of the dam to 40,000 cubic meters per second.
Rainfall throughout the day on Sunday had more than doubled the flow on the upper section of Three Gorges from more than 30,000 cubic meters per second.
One of the most vulnerable places is Chongqing, which has 30 million people in the city and its surroundings.
Xinhua reported that more than 200,000 people had been affected in the city and 16,000 people had been evacuated over the weekend.
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