Raging Floods Hammer Northeastern China

Raging waters two stories high submerged tourist sites on an island in northeastern China on Tuesday, and soldiers struggled to keep the rain-swollen river out of a key industrial center.

The Songhua River washed over its banks in Harbin and threatened to devastate this provincial capital of about 3 million. Trying to contain the deluge, hundreds of troops built a 5-foot-high retaining wall of metal rods and wood planks.

With the Songhua at a record 397 1/2 feet and rising, Harbin braced today for what could be the worst flooding here in 50 years. Families fled low-lying areas of the city and camped in roadside tents.

The Songhua rolled over Sun Island, leaving just the bridge that connects it to Harbin poking above the water. Soldiers evacuated more than 700 families and 52 businesses from the island, which is famed for its winter festival. Fifty-two endangered Siberian tigers were also moved from a breeding center on the island.

As more than 260,000 people worked to protect Harbin, millions manned dikes along the Yangtze River in central China as it crested for the sixth time this summer.

Embankments, fortified by weeks of sandbagging, held back the record-high waters, state media reported. Officials apparently put aside plans to dynamite dikes to save cities downstream.

Seasonal rains that began early and fell more heavily than usual have produced the worst flooding along the Yangtze in 44 years. More than 2,000 people have died nationwide in the flooding, and millions have been left homeless.

Vice Premier Li Lanqing convened a meeting Tuesday of the State Council to discuss ways to prevent outbreaks of disease.

China Central Television showed medical teams examining flood victims, distributing medicine and putting purification chemicals in vats of drinking water.

Flood waters have already washed over roads and rail lines connecting Harbin with Daqing, a city next to China’s largest oil field.

More than 270,000 soldiers, oil workers and other civilians were working night and day to prevent the Nen River from overwhelming the Daqing oil field.