Fast-rising waters in a huge lake in southern China have swollen above flood warning marks, threatening to engulf millions of people as a tropical storm dumps rain on the region.
Water levels at Dongting, China's second largest freshwater lake and an overflow for the flood-prone Yangtze river, have risen more than 1.5 metres over the 32-metre warning mark in the last two days, state television said yesterday.
Waters on the lake in Hunan province reached 33.55 metres yesterday, the highest level in nearly three years, and were expected to rise further in the next few days, it said.
"A flood wave on the Yangtze river will enter Hunan within the coming days," it said. "Local people are preparing for a water level of 35 metres."
The lake hit a high of 35.9 metres in 1998 when some of China's worst floods in decades killed 4,000 people.
Tropical storm Vongfong was last night expected to dump torrential rain on parts of Hunan and to swell the Xiangjiang river - one of four feeding into Dongting lake - well beyond danger levels, one Hunan provincial official said. "Vongfong will affect the Xiangjiang river, so it will impact on the Dongting lake system."
The official China Daily newspaper said the lake could burst its banks. Thousands had been mobilised to reinforce embankments around the lake which shield more than 10 million people and 1.6 million acres of farmland, the daily said.
The television news said the lake had hit warning levels along 560 miles of embankments.
China's summer floods, which began early this year, have already killed more than 900 people, prompting warnings from government officials that it could be more deadly than 1998.
Meanwhile, floods and landslides in the south-western province of Yunnan this month killed 231 people, the China News Service said on its website www.chinanews.com.- (Reuters)