 |
| Photo taken on July 26, 2010 shows the flooded Ciqikou ancient town in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng) |
Last Tuesday, the flow of the Yangtze River exceeded the rate during the 1998 floods that killed 4,150 people and was the highest since the dam became fully operational in 2009. But the dam managed to buffer the worst of the floods.
Flooding killed at least 13 people in Yichang in the past three days.
Disaster prevention efforts were especially intensified in Hubei's provincial capital of Wuhan City, where the Hanjiang River and the Yangtze's mainstream converge.
About 7,551 workers were mobilized to check the dikes and other flood-control systems in the central China city around the clock.
In northwest China's Shaanxi Province, soldiers tried for a second time to fix a breach in the embankment of a flooding tributary of the Weihe River, a branch of the Yellow River, China's second longest river.
More than 3,000 soldiers and local residents have been laying rocks and sand bags narrowing the initially 80-meter gap but failed to completely plug it.
