China Rushes To Contain Floods After Record Rainfall

Shanghai, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Jul, 2020 ) :Soldiers erected sandbag flood barriers in a city near China's largest freshwater lake after the heaviest rainfall in nearly six decades drenched the swollen Yangtze River basin.

The vast Yangtze drainage area has been lashed by torrential rains since last month, leaving 141 people dead or missing and forcing the evacuation of millions more across several provinces.

Flooding along the river -- the world's third longest -- has been an annual summer scourge since ancient times, but this year's inundation has been especially severe.

The downpours have intensified since last week, causing dozens of Yangtze-basin waterways to post record-high water levels, while more than 400 had exceeded warning levels, Vice Minister of Emergency Management Zheng Guoguang said on Monday.

"Since June, average precipitation in the Yangtze river basin has been the highest since 1961," he told a news briefing in Beijing.

Authorities had been monitoring a flood crest as it neared Wuhan, the metropolis of 11 million that the Yangtze winds through and which had already suffered the vast number of China's deaths and cases in the coronavirus pandemic, which first emerged in the city.

They said river levels were decreasing after the crest passed Wuhan on Monday with no reports of major new flooding there.