The huge city of Chongqing has been badly disrupted
Posted on 09/07/2004 10:55:28 AM PDT by yankeedame
Last Updated: Tuesday, 7 September, 2004, 09:20 GMT 10:20 UK
At least 100 dead in China floods
The huge city of Chongqing has been badly disrupted
At least 100 people have died in China as a result of heavy rains which have also put the massive Three Gorges hydroelectric system on flood alert. More than 80 other people are missing in south-western Sichuan province after days of rain which local officials described as the heaviest in years.
Landslides and flash floods have destroyed houses and crops and left hundreds stranded.
The heavy rain eased on Tuesday, as rescue teams tried to reach survivors.
China regularly suffers storms and severe flooding in its summer rainy season, and more than 800 people have died due to severe weather this year.
More than 450,000 people have been evacuated and 127,000 homes destroyed or damaged, the China Daily reported.
In Sichuan and nearby Chongqing, entire communities have been marooned.
The worst-affected area is said to be the city of Dazhou, which has been hit with 360mm (14.4 inches) of rain, and has lost all its road links.
"There have been a lot of heavy mudslides and landslides. It is a serious situation in some counties," an official surnamed Liu at the Sichuan disaster relief bureau told the French news agency AFP.
"In Dazhou city there are around 3,000 people trapped by mudslides. In that city around 10,000 are trapped altogether. Local officials and troops are trying to evacuate people in dangerous places," he said.
The Chinese authorities put an initial estimate of the cost of flood damage in the region at hundreds of millions of dollars.
To the east of Sichuan, the massive Three Gorges dam project was closed to shipping for the first time since it began operations earlier this year.
Water flow at the dam has surpassed the warning levels of 45,000 cubic metres per second and is expected to reach 60,000 cubic metres per second on Wednesday, Xinhua said.
That's a big dam!
If only Bush had stopped acting provocatively toward the peaceful Chinese, their govt wouldn't have been forced to divert scarce funding from vital flood control resources to wasteful defensive military measures.
/satire
The shell of the dam is rolled in place concrete, not poured into a mold but dumped in a dryer than usual mix from dumptrucks, spread out then steam rolled...layer after layer after layer...leaving muliple horizontal seams throughout the dam.
If Three Gorges goes, China will have to rethink their one family one child rule.
Well, if you read the anti-Three Gorges stuff, if's also a geopolitical hot potato.
It was originally the brainchild of Sun Yat Sen(sp?) in the 1920s, followed by US help in the 1940s, followed by Soviets
in the 1950s...followed by the US in the early 1980s followed by the Canadians in the 1980s...
So, the US helped pick the spot based on the 1940s state-of-the-art dam building info. I would hope they
updated and reconfirmed the spot, given the increase in dam/geological knowledge.
That's the engineering design part of the massive public works project.
Then, you have everybody anxious to promote their EME manufactuers in the project.
If there were unions in the PRC, I'm sure they would be getting their cut.
Just dam.
I read that the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam is so gigantic (and so new) that it is actually disrupting that point on its continental plate. Vulcanologists have no idea what the seismic effects might be, because nobody's ever managed to put that much new weight in one place so quickly before.
Previous posts on FR have discussed the many shortcomings of the dam, including 10 ft. fissures that formed in the concrete face of the dam. These fissures were filled in with extra-high strength grout, but they reappeared. It looks like China bought the franchise for Kremlin concrete.
When I visited China, the thing that amazed me most about the newer structures was that they built with steel-reinforced concrete and were all highly over engineered. The new highways were all cracking apart and there was not a true angle to be found.
I recommend holding off on that Yellow River cruise you've been dying to take until the rainy season is over.
If this dam fails, we are looking at the end of communism in China. The dam was supposed to be a symbol of Chicom technological prowess and skill. I don't think Bectel had any part in it. They knew better.
It's a damn big damn, and that damn dam is gonna bust damn it.
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