Racing against a deluge
Source: Xinhua |
July 13, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Hundreds of soldiers and armed police are rushing to complete a drainage channel to prevent a dangerously overfilled reservoir from bursting and flooding a city of 205,700 people in northwest China.
Authorities said they expected to drain the Wenquan Reservoir, 130 kilometers from Golmud City in Qinghai Province, by early today.
Golmud is nestled in a mountainous area where melting snow from the Kunlun Mountains forms rivers that flow to the Qaidam Basin.
Days of heavy rain this month coincided with the snow-melt and caused torrents of water to pour into the reservoir, pushing up the water level at one point to 1.18 meters above the warning line, officials with the provincial disaster relief headquarters said.
According to the latest weather forecast, rain will again soak Golmud and the reservoir area tomorrow. More rains are expected in the coming days in the mountains south of Golmud, which might also cause rivers in the region to overflow.
More than 9,700 residents in the city were relocated in 1,200 tents in a safe area as of yesterday afternoon.
Guolemude Town was the hardest-hit, with water as deep as two meters filling the town.
Anbu, a resident of the town, was waiting to be evacuated. "Water is knee-deep in my house. We have to leave our house for fear of flooding," she said.
Soldiers have been using excavators to dig an waterway from the Wenquan Reservoir since last Wednesday. Trucks carrying earth, mud and rocks have dotted the mountain pass leading to the reservoir, about 3,960 meters above sea-level.
Deng Bentai, a deputy governor of Qinghai, said if enough rocks were supplied to finish the waterway, work could start today to discharge the excess water. Officials said the digging phase of the channel - 250 meters long, 12 meters wide and nine meters deep - had almost ended.
Officials expected the new channel and two existing channels to release 400 cubic meters of water a second, relieving pressure on the reservoir, which contains 240 million cubic meters of water, 30 million cubic meters more than its previous high.
If it bursts, the reservoir could inundate Golmud with water up to four meters deep. The city's power and water plants are also at risk, according to the municipal government.
The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway, could also be hit by flood waters as it is only 40 kilometers from the reservoir.
On July 8, a new round of rainstorms started to batter provinces and regions in central and southwest China, triggering floods and landslides, bursting dikes, and destroying houses and farmland.
Authorities said they expected to drain the Wenquan Reservoir, 130 kilometers from Golmud City in Qinghai Province, by early today.
Golmud is nestled in a mountainous area where melting snow from the Kunlun Mountains forms rivers that flow to the Qaidam Basin.
Days of heavy rain this month coincided with the snow-melt and caused torrents of water to pour into the reservoir, pushing up the water level at one point to 1.18 meters above the warning line, officials with the provincial disaster relief headquarters said.
According to the latest weather forecast, rain will again soak Golmud and the reservoir area tomorrow. More rains are expected in the coming days in the mountains south of Golmud, which might also cause rivers in the region to overflow.
More than 9,700 residents in the city were relocated in 1,200 tents in a safe area as of yesterday afternoon.
Guolemude Town was the hardest-hit, with water as deep as two meters filling the town.
Anbu, a resident of the town, was waiting to be evacuated. "Water is knee-deep in my house. We have to leave our house for fear of flooding," she said.
Soldiers have been using excavators to dig an waterway from the Wenquan Reservoir since last Wednesday. Trucks carrying earth, mud and rocks have dotted the mountain pass leading to the reservoir, about 3,960 meters above sea-level.
Deng Bentai, a deputy governor of Qinghai, said if enough rocks were supplied to finish the waterway, work could start today to discharge the excess water. Officials said the digging phase of the channel - 250 meters long, 12 meters wide and nine meters deep - had almost ended.
Officials expected the new channel and two existing channels to release 400 cubic meters of water a second, relieving pressure on the reservoir, which contains 240 million cubic meters of water, 30 million cubic meters more than its previous high.
If it bursts, the reservoir could inundate Golmud with water up to four meters deep. The city's power and water plants are also at risk, according to the municipal government.
The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway, could also be hit by flood waters as it is only 40 kilometers from the reservoir.
On July 8, a new round of rainstorms started to batter provinces and regions in central and southwest China, triggering floods and landslides, bursting dikes, and destroying houses and farmland.
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