Yangtse flood peak passes

Press, 20 July 1981, Page 8

Yangtse flood peak passes

NZPA-Reuter Peking The peak of the flood waters swelling the Yangtse River after torrential rains upstream flowed safely through China’s biggest hy-dro-electric dam project at Gezhouba early yesterday, a flood control official said. The flood peak passed through the sluices at the dam before dawn, apparently without causing damage to the temporary coffer dam blocking the main channel during construction. Floods upstream in Sichuan claimed the lives of between 3000 and 4000 people last week and destroyed at least 50,000 homes, according to preliminary figures. Several thousand others were injured and up to 100,000 of the surviving victims had fallen sick in the aftermath. Their illnesses were not specified, but officials said it

was common for flood victims to go down with fevers and various kinds of sickness after their homes and villages had been swamped. The flood control official at Wuhan said that although dykes had been strengthened in low-lying areas downstream from the dam. the threat to Hubei Province appeared not to be as great as had been feared. While the flooding in the upper reaches of the Yangtse and several of its main tributaries had been the worst for decades, by the time the flood high reached the industrial city of Wuhan in five days it would be well below the level of the 1954 Yangtse floods in which thousands died. The “People’s Daily” in Peking yesterday printed the news as its lead story for the first time, but still withheld the casualty figures from the populace.