China flooding alert

Record water levels are testing the capacity of China's massive Three Gorges Dam after heavy rains raged on across the country, adding to flooding problems that have already left more than 1,200 people dead or missing.
By The Newsroom
Published 29th Jul 2010, 00:03 BST
Updated 29th Jul 2010, 00:03 BST

The dam's water flow reached 56,000 cubic metres per second yesterday, the biggest peak flow this year as the water level reached 518ft, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. This was about 10 per cent less than the dam's maximum capacity.

Chinese officials for years boasted the dam could withstand floods so severe they come only once every 10,000 years.

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The dam is the world's largest hydroelectric project and was also built to end centuries of floods along the Yangtze River basin.

Floods this year killed at least 823 people – while 437 are missing – and caused tens of billions of dollars' worth of damage, the State Flood Control and Drought Prevention reported.

More heavy rains were expected for the south-east, south-west and north-east parts of the country until today.

Though China experiences heavy rains every summer, flooding this year is the worst in more than a decade. The flood-prone Yangtze River basin saw 15 per cent more rain than in an average year, director Duan Yihong of the National Meteorological Centre said in a post on the Xinhua website.

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