Drastic Measures May Be Taken to Try to Control Yangtze Flooding

Carrying what possessions they could, hundreds of thousands of Chinese villagers turned their backs Friday on homes that will be sacrificed to the raging waters of the Yangtze River if authorities resort to drastic measures to keep flooding at bay.

With the river at record levels and rising, officials were preparing to open floodgates and, if that failed, blow up a dike to divert the swollen waters from one of the most threatened sections of the 3,900-mile waterway.

Local authorities said late Friday that they had not received the order to inundate the Jingjiang flood plain in Hubei province.

A fresh surge of water down the river Friday raised new fears among officials that sodden levees weakened by more than a month of rain and floods would give way.

More than 2,000 people have died in summer floods that began in June, and the death toll has continued to rise. By late Friday, about 250,000 of the 330,000 residents ordered to vacate the Jingjiang plain had been evacuated to higher ground, the official New China News Agency reported.

Embankments protecting Jiujiang city, downriver in Jiangxi province, partly collapsed Friday, swamping parts of the city, the news agency said.

Emergency workers sank three boats in an effort to plug the 132-foot-wide gap and struggled to build a second emergency dike for the city, a petrochemical and textile center.

Officials also were breaking open smaller dikes to lower the Yangtze.