Wuhan residents unite to battle the floods

City hard hit by Covid-19 now has tens of thousands volunteering to help

Police officers evacuating residents of Jiujiang city in China's south-eastern Jiangxi province on Tuesday, as flooding affected the area. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Flooding in Huzhou city in China's eastern Zhejiang province yesterday, after heavy
Flooding in Huzhou city in China's eastern Zhejiang province yesterday, after heavy rainfall caused Tai Lake to overflow its banks. Incessant downpours have already wreaked havoc in vast stretches of China, and more thunderstorms and heavy rain are expected today in parts of Zhejiang, Sichuan, Chongqing, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai. PHOTO: REUTERS
Police officers evacuating residents of Jiujiang city in China's south-eastern Jiangxi province on Tuesday, as flooding affected the area. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Flooding in Huzhou city in China's eastern Zhejiang province yesterday, after heavy
Police officers evacuating residents of Jiujiang city in China's south-eastern Jiangxi province on Tuesday, as flooding affected the area. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WUHAN • After its arduous battle against the coronavirus outbreak, Wuhan, the city hardest hit by the epidemic in China, is now uniting to fight against another enemy - flooding.

The Yangtze River, which runs through Wuhan in central China's Hubei province, passed through the city at 11pm on Sunday at a peak level of 28.8m. It was the river's fourth-highest recorded level in Wuhan.

However, the local government and the city's residents remain on guard, as the section of the river in the city is likely to remain above the warning level for at least another 10 days.

China's national observatory renewed a blue alert for rainstorms yesterday, as incessant downpours continued to wreak havoc in vast stretches of the country. China has a four-tier, colour-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected today in parts of Sichuan, Chongqing, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang, said the National Meteorological Centre.

The centre advised the local authorities to remain alert for possible flooding, landslides and mudslides, and recommended stopping outdoor operations in hazardous areas.

Wuhan residents, after staying at home to minimise the spread of the coronavirus earlier this year, have now come forward to patrol its flood embankments at all hours to protect the city, which has a population of about 11 million.

The local authorities said Wuhan now has about 30,000 people on patrol every day.

Among them is Ms Wang Han, a Wuhan resident who was rescued during the 1998 flood in the city. In 1998, Wuhan was hit hard by the flooding of the Yangtze - the third-longest river in the world - which killed more than 3,000 people and left 14 million people displaced along the Yangtze River basin.

Ms Wang said she can still remember clearly when People's Liberation Army soldiers rescued her in an inflatable boat and took her home after her primary school was flooded. She was eight at the time.

Now, the 30-year-old community worker has volunteered to join the patrol of the city's flood defences.

"The Covid-19 outbreak has made Wuhan people more united than ever, so we can quickly come together to fight the flood," said Ms Wang, who is from Xudong community in Wuchang district.

She had helped elderly people in her community get their groceries during the outbreak when the city was put under lockdown from Jan 23 to April 8.

She started to patrol the 2.8km flood embankment near Xudong on July 8. During her shift, from 6am to 2pm, she walked back and forth to check for any leaks in the embankment and to record the water level.

"Last week, the water level was about 27m, and now it has surpassed 28m. Flood control shields were also put up along the embankment," Ms Wang said.

Like fighting the pandemic, the battle against the flood can be fatal.

Early on Monday, Mr Shu Mingzhi, director of the water affairs service centre of Xinchong sub-district, fell ill when he was patching up the embankment at a lake in Wuhan. The 59-year-old later died of a brain haemorrhage in hospital.

Mr Shu had been working for more than 30 days without a break to fight the floods since the city entered the rainy season, according to the Wuhan government.

Although the flood peak has now passed Wuhan, Mr Chen Guiya, deputy chief engineer of the Changjiang Water Resources Commission, said on Tuesday that the water level of the Yangtze River at the Wuhan section will remain above the warning level for about another 10 days.

Since the crest passed Wuhan, concern has shifted downstream to Poyang Lake, which drains into the Yangtze in hard-hit Jiangxi province.

Summer rains and seasonal glacial melt in the Yangtze's Tibetan plateau headwaters cause routine annual flooding.

But environmentalists say the threat has worsened over the decades, due in part to rampant construction of dams and levees that have cut connections between the river and adjacent lakes and floodplains that for centuries had helped absorb the summer surge.

CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK, XINHUA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 16, 2020, with the headline Wuhan residents unite to battle the floods. Subscribe