Facts and Details

FLOODS IN CHINA

Flood preparedness poster Floods and devastating landslides and mudslides are serious problems in China. Every year hundreds die in them during the June-to-August rainy season. Around 500 people die from them Yunnan Province alone.

The flood and landslide problems are often exacerbated by deforestation and erosion. Without trees, plants and bushes to absorb the water and hold the earth in place, water runs off quickly and causes flash floods and saturates slopes, causing landslides.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the deadliest flood ever killed 900,000 people around the Hwang-ho River in October 1887.

Worst Recorded Floods and Tidal Waves (number of dead): 1) Huang He River, China, August 1931 (3,700,000); 2) Huang He River, China, 1887 (900,000); 3) China, 1642 (300,000); 4) North China, 1939 (200,000); 5) Chang Jian River, China (100,000); 6) Holland, 1228 (100,000); 7) Indonesia, Aug 27, 1883 (100,000); 8) Morvi, India, Aug, 11, 1979 (15,000); 9) Bangladesh, Oct 10, 1960 (6,000); 10) Galveston, TX, Sept. 8, 1900 (5,000).

The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters is in charge of developing and carrying flood control plans.

Yellow River Floods

From time to time the Yellow River overflows its banks and fills huge plains with large amounts of water. Floods sometimes occur when blocks of ice block the Yellow River. About once a century these floods reach catastrophic levels.

When the levees of the Yellow River break, which happens with some regularity, the countryside is devastated. When the river’s dikes were breached in 132 B.C., floods occurred in 16 districts and a new channel was opened in the middle of the plain. Ten of millions of peasants were affected. The break remained for 23 years until Emperor Wu-ti visited the scene and supervised its repair.

In A.D. 11, the Yellow River breached its dikes near the same place, and the river changed course and forged an new path to sea, a hundred miles away from its former mouth. Repair work took several decades.

In a tactic intended to halt the southward movement of Japanese soldiers from Manchuria before World War II, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his soldiers to breach the levees of the Yellow River and purposely divert its flow. At least 200,000, maybe millions, died, millions more were made homeless and the Japanese advanced anyway.

Yangtze Floods

The Yangtze River frequently overflows its banks and fills huge plains with large amounts of water, causing catastrophic flooding. There are floods every year during the June-to-September monsoon season. On average at least several hundred people are killed in Yangtze River floods every year. Some years there are devastating floods.

The Yangtze is responsible for 70 to 75 percent of China’s floods. Floods on the river in the 20th century alone have killed more than 300,000 people. There were catastrophic floods on the Yangtze in 1931, 1935 and 1954 and 1998. Over 2,000 are believed to have died in the flood of 1991. Some 4,100 died in the floods in 1998.

In 1931, 140,000 people were drowned when Yangtze dikes gave way. A Yangtze River flood in 1954 killed 30,000 people outright and perhaps an additional 200,000 through starvation and disease. One villager who lived through it told the Washington Post, "The corpses were put in coffins but they could not be buried. They were just stacked up.”

The Three Gorges Dam has reduced flood risks in the middle stretch of the river but the risks of flooding remains high on the lower stretches.

Heavy Rain and Floods in Guizhou

In June 2007, severe floods struck parts of southern China. Describing a flood that devastated a Dong minority village in Guizhou Province, Amy Tan wrote in National Geographic: “A small amount of flooding was not unusual in summer...But this rain did not stop. People could hear its splattering on their roofs all night long. The Chief Village Elder, who lived in the flat valley, saw the river rising but was not concerned at first. He went to the mountains at 5:00am to feed his horse. When he returned the river had spilled over its ten-foot-high banks. His family was gone, they had already carried the he television and their valuables to the top floor. The neighbors were in the midst of securing coffins and sacred pigs. He watched from the closest bridge.”

“On the other side of the bridge, water rushed into the ground levels homes, “ Tan wrote. “A frightened young woman strapped her baby to her back and she and her in-laws took what they could to the upper level. Other belongings floated away; buckets and stools, pails of anyu and bamboo holsters for scythes. One neighbor’s front door ripped off and became a raft. The narrow road was now part of the river, a dark channel of mud, rocks, debris and logs. Waves slapped on the sides of the shortest bridge, and water gushed through rail slats and covered the benches. It looked like a boat about to leave it mooring. Submerged fields broadened the river, and hundreds of carp rushed downstream. Some landed in fields. People stood on bridge trying to net the rest.

“At 9 a.m. the rain subsided. At 11 a.m. the water began to recede....According to the chief it was the worst flood in 80 to 100 years. Fields were lost. Homes were damaged, roads were washed out, but luckily no one was killed.” The devastation was widespread. All of Guizhou and Hunan Provinces had been affected. Many wondered if the illegal grave curse was still active. Were more illegal burials to be found? A certain sense of releif was achived when the Feng Shui Master announced that the floods were “a natural disaster, not a supernatural one.”

Floods in China in the 1990s

In 1996, there were large floods on the Huai River in Anhui province. Flood waters turned hilltop villages into islands; left pig and chickens on rooftops; and caused one lake to exceed its shore by five kilometers. A similar flood occurred in 1991. In 1996 there was also severe floods in Hunan and Guangxi.

Around the same time as the 1998 Yangtze floods, there were also catastrophic floods on the Nen River around the city of Qiqhar near the Mongolian border.

In the summer 1999, monsoon floods caused by the overflowing upper and middle Yangtze, left at least 400 dead and 1.84 million homeless. More than 66 million people were affected.

Yangtze Floods in 1998

Satellite view of 1998 flood In the summer of 1998, the Yangtze experienced its worst floods in 44 years. More than 4,100 people were killed, 13.8 million were left homeless and 240 million people (a number equal to the entire population of the United States) were affected directly by the rising waters.

The floods submerged 21 million acres of land, affected 53 million acres and destroyed 11 million acres of crops. More than 5.8 million houses were destroyed. Dikes were blown up in Jianli County to save Wuhan, a city of seven million people 150 miles upstream. Even so waters reached waist level in downtown Wuhan.

Some people were evacuated on short notice and lost most of their possessions. Some tied their stuff in trees above the flood water because they couldn't carry them. Soldiers and police were called in to evacuate a half million people, keep order, prevent looting and stop the flooding. Dramatic footage was shown on Chinese television of soldiers risking their lives to reach from trees to pluck victims from the raging waters and working hard to shore up dikes with sandbags.

Causes of Yangtze Floods in 1998

Severe rainfall was the main cause of the floods but man-induced factors included deforestation of erosion-subverting forests in the Yangtze river basin and other areas also contributed to the disaster. Rain water absorbed by forests and vegetation flows more slowly to rivers and streams, preventing flooding.

Other problems included the inhabitation of vulnerable flood plains by large numbers of people (550,000 people were evacuated from an area in which 170,000 were evacuated in 1954); the silting up and development of lakes that previously absorbed flood waters; and the neglect of dikes. In 1980, $1.2 billion was earmarked for dike improvement. But by 1987, only $48 million had been spent. Some of the money was diverted to the Three Gorges Dam project.

Corruption and ineptitude were also factors. Large sums of flood prevention money was stolen, much of it by contractors who took money and then gave the work to other contractors who took money without doing any work. In some places, corrupt officials pocketed money intended to be spent on steel rods that was supposed to reinforce the dikes. Without the metal rods some dikes melted away.

See Roads and Bridges.

After the 1998 floods, dikes were reinforced at considerable expense and hundreds of thousands of people that lived near the banks were forced to relocate.

Floods in China in the Early-2000s

Placing sandbags During the 2001 summer flood season around 1,100 people were killed across China by the flooding and 1.3 million were left homeless.

In May 2003, landslides caused by heavy rains and floods in Fujian, Guangdong and Hunan Provinces, in southern and central China killed 45 people. More than 200,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

In July 2003, landslides caused by heavy rains and floods in the Sichuan regions of central China killed 21 people. More than 10,000 people were evacuated along the Huaihe River in Anhui Province, where dikes were blown up with explosives to keep flood waters way from populated areas. In one case a dike was blown up to protect people in the industrial city of Bengpu but in the process water poured into an area in which 11,130 villages had been evacuated.

In September 2003, torrential rains and floods in central China destroyed more than 17,000 homes in Henan Province and forced more than 200,000 to flee from their homes in Henan and in neighboring Shaanxi Province. Anhui and Jiangsu provinces were also hit. Heavy rains fell day after day, triggering mudslides, cutting off power and telephone and cell phone communications, and destroying roads and bridges. Thousands of villages were affected more than a million people were stranded.

Flooded Lake in China in 2002

In August 2002, heavy rains caused Dongting Lake in Hunan Province to overflow it banks. The rains swelled rivers, flowing into the Rhode-Island-size lake. causing lake waters to rise to seven feet above dangerous levels.

About 15,000 troops joined 930,00 civilians, working around the clock, to stack sandbags and plug breaches in dikes. Yuenyang, a city of 600,000 on the northeastern bank of the lake, was severely flooded as was Changas, a city on one of the rivers flowing into the lake. Around 600,000 people were evacuated from their homes. There were worries that the dikes would be breached, causing extensive flooding in lowlands inhabited by millions.

Summer Floods in China in 2004

Summer floods in China in 2004 killed more than 1,000 people and forced more than 2 million people to evacuate their homes. Most of the dead were in southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong, near Hong Kong, Hunan and Guizhou and in northeastern China. The biggest single tragedy was the death of 62 children and two villagers, who were swept by a flash flood at a primary school in Heilongjiang Province in northeast China. It was one of the deadliest rainy season rains on record.

In July 2004, floods, mudslides, caved in roads and landslides in southern China killed more than 400 people and destroyed nearly 200,000 homes. Hunan, Yunnan, Henan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan were the hardest hit provinces. Chongqing recorded the highest rainfall amounts in 200 years. The largest branch of the Yangtze, in Hunan Province, had the worst floods in a century. Road cave-ins cut off Dazhou’s downtown area. The rains, which were associated with the seasonal rainy season, also damaged thousands of acres of crops.

In September 2004, once-a-century rains caused massive floods and mudslides in Sichuan, leaving 174 dead, scores missing and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes. Huge volumes of water backed up behind the Three Gorges dam. Most of the deaths were caused by landslides, fast-moved mud and rock flows and flash floods.

Floods in China in the Mid-2000s

In September 2004, floods caused by heavy rains in Sichuan Province, killed at least 120 people and cause authorities to put the Three Gorges dam on alert.

In March 2005, rapid melting of heavy winter snows in Xinjiang caused flooding and landslides that destroyed about 10,000 homes and 100 bridges. Snows in the Tien Shen mountains were thicker than usual. and they melted more quickly than usual as temperatures soared in early March,

Torrential downpours from the heaviest rains in a century in July 2005 around the city of Dazhou in Sichuan in southwest China caused severe flooding, resulting in 29 deaths and the evacuation of 150,000 people. Roads to Dazhou were cut off by floods and water levels reached the third floor of some buildings.

In August 2005, heavy rains and landslides killed at least 47 across China. Thirty two people were killed in the central province of Hubei.

In July 2006, the worst rains in 45 years in Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces left 30 people dead and destroyed more than 14,000 buildings.

In June 2006, 53 people were killed after flash floods ripped through Guizhou Province in southwestern China. Nearly 1,300 homes collapsed in Wangmo and Luodian counties after 211 millimeters of rain fell during a four-hour downpour. In the previous two weeks more 93 people were killed as a result of torrential rains in southern China. Twenty-nine people were killed and 50,000 were evacuated and 23,000 homes were destroyed in Fujian Province, where some places received more than 20 centimeters of rain.

Floods in China in 2007

Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtzee
during normal conditions In May, June and July 2007, more than 700 people were killed and 119 million people—10 percent of China’s population—were affected by floods, lightning strikes and landslides, mostly in southern and central China. More than 220,000 houses and 6 million hectares of farmland were wholly or partially destroyed, causing $7 billions in damage. Some places struggled with near constant heavy rain for days on end. Some blamed global warming for the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather.

Some of the worst flood occurred along 1) the Huai River in Anhui, Henan and Jiangsu Provinces; 2) and the Jiangsu River, a tributary of the Yangtze in Sichuan. Communities in the mountainous areas around Chongqing were particularly hard hit. Guangdong, Yunnan Guangxi and Guizhou were also hard hit. The flooding was the worst in China since 1998. Farmers suffered the most deaths and damage. Millions were forced to evacuate from their homes.

Some people in Yunnan died in violent mudflows. In Chongqing dozens died because the drainage system there was unable to accommodate large mounts of steady rain. In one instance 255 millimeters of rain fell there in a 14 hour period. In Shandong 49 people were killed in a storm that dropped 118 millimeters of rain in one hour. A heavy three-hour downpour there flooded the downtown area of provincial capital of Jinan. According to officials sources 34 people were killed in and around the city but according to one Internet posting more than 100 died in downtown Jinan when a busy supermarket became flooded.

In May 2007, landslides triggered by heavy rains on Garze, a Tibetan region in Sichuan, killed 21 people, buried a village and knocked a bus off a highway. Twelve died in the village and nine died in the bus. Another 340 people were left homeless. .

Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtzee
during high water period In July 2007, several rivers, including the Yangtze and the Huai, overflowed their banks and left hundreds of thousands homeless. A half million people in Anhui. Henan and Jiangsu fled a deadly flood zone along the swollen Huai River caused by continuous rains through much of June and July. Water had been diverted into other rivers and designated low fields but still waters reached dangerous levels. People in the normally dry provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang were swept away by rain-swollen rivers Heavy rains in Shaanxi in the northeast killed 30 people and cut off roads and telecommunications. More than 8,000 houses were affected by landslides and 35,000 people were left homeless.

In August 2007, heavy rainstorms killed at least 31 people in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. Seventeen people in Yibin County in Sichuan died in a landslide. Fourteen people in Zhaotong City in Yunnan died in landslides and floods.

While southern China was experiencing floods northern China was enduring droughts that left 11 million people short of drinking water.

Mice Attack, Floods and Drought in China

In the summer of 2007, the combination of a long drought followed by floods produced an infestation of mice around Dongting Lake in Hunan Province that destroyed thousands of acres of crops and damaging important dikes by burrowing through them to reach crops. By some estimates 2 billion eastern field mice—known locally as rats—overran 22 counties around the lake.

The were reports of houses in Hunan being inundated with mice driven from their holes by flood waters. A farmer who woke up one morning to find his fields destroyed by mice told the Washington Post, “You can hear them as they bite the rice—chir, chir chir. It’s deafening.” Another said, “You can easily step on them just by walking on the road, there are so many.”

A massive mice cull was conducted and people were put on the alert for rodent-caused disease. Efforts to poison them worked to some degree but also killed cats, dogs, cows, chickens and pigs. Television footage showed residents of Yoyang city beating mice to death with clubs and shovels. Others were caught with fishing nets and drowned and poisoned. Over a five week period 2.3 million mice—90 tons of them—were killed. Most were buried in deep pits under layers of lime o prevent the spread of disease.

A drought that lasted through much of the fall, winter and spring, reduced the water levels in Lake Dongting Lake around the cities of Bianhu and Yueyand in Hunan, producing condition ideal for mice breeding. When the gates of the sluice on Three Gorges Dam were opened to relieve flooding water from the Yangtze poured into the lake, causing the mice to flee for high ground. Witnesses said the scene was like a movie about the Apocalypse.

Overpopulations of mice are also being blamed on the harvesting of snakes for food. Snakes can consume up to 400 mice year.

Heavy Rains and Floods in China in 2008 and 2009

Heavy rains and flooding associated with the early summer rainy season in southern China in June 2008 killed at least 176 people and left 52 missing , destroyed or damaged 134,000 homes, flooded 23,000 square kilometers of farm land and homes, destroyed more than 2.32 hectares of crops, caused $4 billion in damage and forced more than 1.6 million people in nine provinces to seek higher ground.

State television showed submerged streets and houses along the Xinjiang River in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces and people seeking refuge on the roofs of their houses. Soldiers and police worked through the night to shore up soggy levees and dams threatening to burst with sandbags. Fields of cucumbers, bitter melons and other vegetables were swamped.

In July 2008,Tropical Storm Fengshen killed at least nine people in southern China. A month later Tropical Storm Fung-wong produced floods that killed at least 11 people in eastern China. Rain in the wake of the storms lasted for three days, causing the Chuhe River in Anhui Province to swell and inundate more than 300,000 hectare of land.

In June 2008, a tornado in Anhui Province destroyed 650 homes and killed one person and injuring 45, eight seriously.

In July and August 2009, heavy rains in Sichuan, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou Provinces left 66 people dead and 66 missing. Hundreds of houses collapsed and a dangerous hole was punched into the spillway of a dam. More than 100,000 people had to be relocated.

Image Sources: 1) Landsberger Posters http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/; 2) Nolls China website http://www.paulnoll.com/China/index.html ; 3) Columbia University; 4, 7,8 ) NASA ; 5, 6) Xinhua

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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© 2008 Jeffrey Hays