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Kamun Lai

Yijing Shen

Emergency forces sealed the main dyke breach at China’s second-largest freshwater lake on Monday night, with a secondary flood defence line being put to the test, according to local authorities.
Dongting Lake, in the central province of Hunan, burst its embankment on Friday, flooding more than 47 sq km (18 square miles) including the town of Tuanzhou where at least 7,000 residents were evacuated, with no reported casualties.
By Saturday, the breach had widened to 226 metres (741ft). Work to seal the dyke was progressing at an average rate of 4 metres per hour by midnight on Sunday, according to mainland media reports.
Hunan vice-governor Zhang Yingchun said on Sunday that an emergency barrier in the embankment had failed on Friday afternoon, less than two hours after it was set up to contain a water release caused by an erosion-related incident.
To seal the breach, mechanised operations built up the dyke from both sides, while rocks and other materials were dumped into the water from barges without interruption throughout the repairs, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
At a press conference on Monday, Zhang said nearly 500 personnel were involved in the repairs, along with more than 3,000 dump trucks and 85 vessels of all types.
Heavy rainfall had more than doubled the surface area of Dongting Lake in the previous week, with Hunan still in its main flood season. Most of the province’s rivers flow into the lake, which also acts as a drainage basin for the Yangtze River.
With a high risk of heavy rain to come, water resource experts warned that the lake would flood Tuanzhou town again if the breach were not sealed, according to a Xinhua report.
Water Resources Commission director Liu Dongshun said on Monday that the Yangtze River is facing more rainfall, while water levels at the Three Gorges Reservoir have remained high, posing a challenge to flood prevention tasks.
Seepage erosion has also been detected on the Qiantuanjian embankment, less than 2km (1.2 miles) from the breach at Tuanzhou, in Yueyang city’s Huarong county. Emergency repair efforts are under way, according to CCTV.




The Qiantuanjian embankment acts as a secondary flood defence line for Qianliang Lake Town after the breaching of the Tuanzhou dyke and has been undergoing reinforcement in recent days, CCTV said.
In 1996, floodwaters breached the Qiantuanjian embankment, claiming 17 lives and inundating 120,000 mu (8,000 hectares) of farmland. According to the local government, the devastation affected 65,000 people and led to direct economic losses of 2.36 billion yuan (US$324.5 million).
Also in Yueyang, the flood control and drought relief headquarters ordered the immediate evacuation of affected residents in four townships on Tuesday morning, after seepage was reported at a dam in Pingjiang county.
Central China’s grain-producing Henan province and Shandong province in the east are facing heavy rainfall and floods, after suffering from the effects of an extreme drought in June.
On Monday evening, the Shandong weather bureau issued a rainstorm red alert – the most severe warning in China’s four-tier system – and forecast more than 5-8cm (2-3 inches) of rain per hour for multiple towns in the southern part of the province.


In Linyi, the most severely affected city, cumulative rainfall reached 28.82cm (11.34 inches) by Monday evening in the week since flood season began – nearly double the same period in previous years.
According to CCTV, more than 3,600 people were affected by the rains, with nearly 2,000 moved to safety from the city’s low-lying areas and geological disaster hazard spots.
In Jining city, in Shandong’s southwest, around 2,400 residents have been evacuated so far after heavy rainfall led to a partial collapse of the Sihe dam, CCTV said.
Heavy rainfall has also hit Heze city, which is still recovering from a powerful tornado that killed five people and left more than 83 injured on Friday.
Rainstorm red alerts were also issued in parts of Henan. The provincial government’s water resources department raised the emergency response level on Tuesday as the Jialu River exceeded the warning level.
Most of Henan’s more than 112 million mu (18 million acres) of cultivated land is at risk of waterlogging, while autumn crops in most areas are at a critical stage of seedling management, Xinhua said.


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Heavy rains continue trail of destruction into Henan and Shandong provinces after dyke breach floods town in Hunan


Heavy rains continue trail of destruction into Henan and Shandong provinces after dyke breach floods town in Hunan.


Floods move to China’s drought-hit farmland as Dongting Lake wall repair holds

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Heavy rains continue trail of destruction into Henan and Shandong provinces after dyke breach floods town in Hunan

Heavy rains continue trail of destruction into Henan and Shandong provinces after dyke breach floods town in Hunan