Chinese lake holds steady but heavy rains forecast

Flood waters in central China’s vast Dongting Lake which threaten several cities and dozens of villages remained at dangerously high levels today - and could rise in the coming days as heavy rain was forecast.

The official Xinhua News Agency said storms which could bring up to two inches of rain by Tuesday, were forecast to hit the northern part of Hunan province, where the lake is located, and the western provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan.

Meanwhile, a state of emergency was declared along the flood-swollen Yangtze River in the major industrial city of Wuhan, in Hubei province.

But a local flood control official said the situation was not considered extremely serious and said no evacuations had been ordered.

Floods and landslides have killed about 1,000 people across China since the rainy season began in June. More than 200 of those deaths were reported in Hunan.

Authorities have said more than a million workers and soldiers have been mobilised to fortify the embankments of Dongting, China’s second-largest fresh water lake, during the past week, as the water level rose.

Skies over the lake were clear today and no major breaches along the lake’s 580 miles of dikes were reported, said an official at the province’s anti-flood headquarters.

He said Dongting’s water level was about six feet above the danger mark today - the same level as the day before.

At the danger mark, water puts deadly amounts of pressure on the dykes around the 1,560-square-mile lake and along rivers flowing into it.

The dykes protect six cities and dozens of villages.

Xinhua said that officials who attended a flood emergency meeting in the provincial capital of Changsha said waters would remain high through early September.

“The flood fighting situation is serious,” it added.

Teams of six people were posted every 165 feet to watch the dykes around-the-clock along the Xiangjiang river, which runs through the city and into Dongting Lake, Xinhua said.

Changsha had ordered 2,000 troops and 300,000 public employees to help fight floods.

Hunan provincial officials have not updated figures for evacuations or damage in the Dongting area.

Authorities said on Friday, about 270,000 people had left the area and that flooding has damaged 67,000 homes.

Villages along the lake’s edge outside the embankment have flooded and islands in the lake and the Xiangjiang have been swamped.

But floods are a near annual occurrence in the area, and residents are well used to their effects.

Life has gone on mostly undisrupted in Yueyang, a city of 600,000 near where Dongting Lake flows into the Yangtze River, China’s longest.