Christian Message Boards: 10 million-plus under threat in China with vast lake at danger level

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Posted by Kindgo (Member # 2) on :

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Tuesday August 20, 2:31 PM

More than 10 million people are under threat from potentially devastating floods, as central China's massive Dongting Lake surged above danger levels with more torrential rain on the way, officials and reports said.

Dongting acts as a buffer to the perennially flood-prone Yangtze River, and if embankments burst the resulting floods could prove the worst in a summer which has already seen around 900 people die in flooding throughout China, officials warned Tuesday.

Authorities around Dongting, China's second-biggest freshwater lake, "are preparing for possibly the worst flood of the year", the China Daily said, quoting local officials in Hunan province.

Water levels in the traditional danger spot of Chenglingji, where the Yangtze exits the lake, were already above warning marks Tuesday.

At 8:00 am (0000 GMT) the waters were almost a metre and a half (five feet) above 32-metre (106-foot) flood warning marks, said an official named He at the anti-flood bureau of nearby Changde city.

With swollen rivers emptying water into the lake all the time, more than 10 million people and 667,000 hectares (1.67 million acres) of farmland were under threat, the China Daily said.

"Thousands" of people had been mobilized round the clock to secure defences around the 2,800 square kilometre (1,070 square mile) lake, the report said.

To add to concerns, meteorologists warned Tuesday that tropical storm Vongfong was due to dump yet more torrential rain over Hunan as it grinds across the country.

Vongfong - named after an insect that inflicts a painful sting - hit the southern province of Guangdong province around 8:40 pm Monday (1200 GMT) and was gradually moving northeast, weakening as it went, the Central Meteorological Bureau in Beijing said.

As it ploughed across the southwestern country it was expected to bring heavy rain to Guangdong and Guangxi provinces as well as Hunan, forecasters said.

Were Dongting Lake to burst its banks, the resulting floods could potentially rival those which devastated the Yangtze region in the summer of 1998, when more than 4,000 people were killed.

Eleswhere, Vongfong brought torrential rain to southern China during Monday and Tuesday, stranding air and rail passengers but causing no reported casualties, officials and reports said.