China's southern Jiangxi declares highest flood alert
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[July 11, 2020]
BEIJING (Reuters) - Jiangxi province
in southern China issued its highest flood warning on Saturday,
predicting a big overflow from a lake on the Yangtze River as torrential
rain continues to batter much of the country, state media said.
The Jiangxi government raised its flood-control response level to I from
II, the People's Daily said, the top level on China's four-tier scale,
signalling disasters such as dam collapses or extraordinary floods
simultaneously in several rivers.
Provincial authorities expect severe regional flooding in Poyang,
China's largest freshwater lake which connects to the Yangtze, state
television said.
The water level in the lake, rising at an unprecedented pace, was 2.3
metres (8 feet), exceeding the alert level, CCTV said in a report around
noon (0200 GMT).
The government of the province's Jiangzhou county, an isolated island on
Asia's longest river, issued a call on social media for everyone from
the town aged 18 to 60 to return and help fight the flood, citing a
severe lack of hands to reinforce dams.
With downpours continuing to wreak havoc across vast swaths of China,
several other cities along the Yangtze have declared highest-level flood
warnings, as incessant rain triggers landslides and inundates roads and
farmland, with parts of the river threatening to burst its banks.
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Rescue workers evacuate with an inflatable boat students stranded by
floodwaters at a school, amid heavy rainfall in Duchang county,
Jiangxi province, China July 8, 2020. China Daily via REUTERS
China's national observatory on Saturday renewed its yellow alert
for rainstorms, warning of heavy of weekend rain in places including
Sichuan and Chongqing in the southwest, the central province of
Hubei and Hunan province in the south.
Authorities in Jiangsu province in the Yangtze Delta issued orange
flood alerts on Saturday - the second-highest - and forecast huge,
long-lasting volumes of water would pour from the river.
(Reporting by Lusha Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by William Mallard)
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