Floods and rain continue to ravage lands, infrastructure
- Source: Global Times
- [01:56 August 06 2010]
- Comments
By Guo Qiang and Liu Linlin
Relentless torrential rains in flood-ravaged Northeast China will further test the already strained dikes and reservoirs, prompting round-the-clock inspections, officials said Thursday.
Wang Ruilin, governor of Jilin Province, one of the worst-hit provinces by flooding since July, said thousands of people had been dispatched to stand guard over dikes and dams, and a round-the-clock monitoring system had been set up to ensure the safety of reservoirs, the provincial government said in a report on its website Thursday.
The speed of water discharge at Fengman Reservoir, the largest reservoir along the Songhua River, has reached 4,500 cubic meters per second, further testing flood-control capabilities in downstream areas, the Xinhua News Agency quoted provincial flood control headquarters as saying.
The flood-triggered damage on water projects this year has resulted in economic losses of 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), Shu Qingpeng, deputy director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said earlier this week.
"In Linjiang City, bordering North Korea along the Yalu River, 38,000 residents in three townships had been relocated as more torrential rains were forecasted," Liu Yuqiang, with the city govern-ment, told the Global Times Thursday.
Sidaogou town was one of the worst hit in Linjiang City. Wang Bin, the vice chief of the town, told the Global Times by phone that some 2,000 residents out of 9,000 have been evacuated to temporarily shelters.
"We suffered the worst flooding since we've had meteorological records," he said. "Tap water supplies have resumed, but it's not suitable for daily consumption purposes due to bad quality."
Heavy rains also hit Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Hebei provinces, as well as the Inner Mongolia Au-tonomous Region in the north and Shandong Province in the east.
Flood-control authorities in Dandong of Liaoning Province, a city bordering North Korea, refuted re-ports that rising water levels in the Yalu River are likely to bring raging floods to the North.
Reuters reported that water levels on two regional major rivers, the Yalu River and Tumen River that divide China from North Korea, are dangerously high, posing threats to China's neighbor.
The water levels of the Shuifeng Reservoir were controllable, the city's Flood Control and Drought Relief office said.
"The water levels are safe," Duan Yuanpeng, with the Dandong government, told the Global Time Thursday. "We are aware that Dandong is higher than the North Korea side. We'll be extremely careful when discharging floodwater."
Xinhua contributed to this story
