Seven million Chinese watch rising Yangtze lap at their suburbs
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.TEAMS OF flood fighters were last night strengthening Wuhan's inner-city flood defences as the level of the Yangtze continued to creep higher.
Down on the city centre waterfront, trucks laden with sandbags were lined up along the most vulnerable part of the urban dyke, at Longwangmiao. Under a huge full moon, police patrols wandered by as labourers shovelled, carried and topped up the flood defences.
Walls of breeze blocks and sandbags now block what are normally gates on to the river.
"This is the most dangerous place," said a woman, with her two daughters. "Since we live just behind here, we are a little bit concerned and want to see what it happening. We've had floods before, but it has never been like this before."
On the old colonial customs house, red paint marks show the levels of the previous high river levels: 1931, 1996 and, at the top, 1954. By yesterday, the river was less than 40cm from the 1954 record, and this week it is due to climb further as a flood crest passes down the Yangtze, and another flows down the Han river, which merges with the mainstream at Wuhan.
At the weekend, officials decided to evacuate residents from three vulnerable outlying parts of Wuhan.
In a further attempt to safeguard the industrial city of seven million, officials 90 miles upstream ordered secondary dykes at Jianli town to be destroyed, allowing about 800 million cubic metres of flood water to inundate 180 sq km.
It was the second time in three days that Jianli's land had been purposefully flooded and some of the 50,000 local villagers "were reluctant to move", said the official Xinhua news agency. "It took local officials some time to persuade them," it added. Evacuees have been carrying whatever belongings they can manage and herding livestock out of the flood diversion areas, but have been forced to leave most of their things behind.
Flood officials are increasingly willing to sacrifice rural areas to reduce the flow in the Yangtze mainstream. It was estimated that the latest Jianli dyke break would lower the Yangtze by 10 to 25cm. That should help compensate for the latest flood crests. Fears about the impact of the surge brought the central government very close at the weekend to blowing a hole in the main Yangtze dyke upstream near Shashi city, after evacuating 330,000 people from the diversion area. In the end, water levels subsided slightly yesterday, postponing such a move.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments