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Flooding brings chaos to South West China
Summer floods brought on by heavier than expected monsoon rainfall have continued to bring chaos to south west regions of China over the past week, adding over 100 deaths to the 800+ recorded storm fatalities suffered by China during the 2004 rainy season.
Floods have all but cut off many parts of Sichuan province and according to government estimates, 10,000 people remain trapped in the city of Dazhou five days after flood waters, reaching as high as 8 meters, cut off road and rail links and destroyed a large portion of the local communications network.
Further north, flood control officials in Hubei province have put emergency measures in place to guard against possible breaches of local riverbanks, and to ensure that the population can be evacuated quickly if flood defenses are swamped by the rising water which have reached dangerous peaks during the past week.
| “We've sent people to keep a 24-hour watch at local embankments and have stepped up publicity work to raise the local people's awareness of the flood.” Hubei Provincial Flood control Headquarters. |
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Official estimates have put the damage caused by flooding, which has destroyed crops, buildings and transportation facilities, at 2.6 billion Yuan. Further flooding in
Red Cross officials working in China have sounded a courteous note that the 2004 monsoon season is likely to be part of an annual increase in the level of damage caused by flooding as changes in rainfall patterns bite into China, bringing heavier rains and more dramatic flooding.
| "Seasonal rains wreak havoc across much of China, but with the amount of rainfall increasing each year, the problems are only likely to get worse" Mr. J Sparrow, Red Cross Regional Information Director. |
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I feel so sorry for what has happened. I hope central and local chinese
government can take efficient measures to help the victims in the
flood.They are so poor.
Sparrow is right, but it's not just because of the rainfall. Part of the
problem here is that deforestation takes away the natural structures that
used to trap and absorb a lot of the water.
Interestingly, some people are beginning to look at the economic value of forests in 2 ways now:
[1]
The products they can provide by being cut down.
[2] The services they
provide by being there, which include flood control.
Wang Hongchang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences also notes an unfortunate follow-on effect. When forests don't trap the water, it runs off instead of evaporating in place. Which tends to choke off rainfall farther inland (like China's growing "dust bowl" in the northwest), because you've broken the transportation chain.
China is starting to do something about all this, replanting the upper Yangtze basin and building a "green wall of China" to stop the Gobi Desert's encroachments. But there isn;t a good master plan just yet.
Interestingly, if you want to look at a really successful reforestation program that has had good success in reducing floods... you only have to look as far as South Korea.