China Struggles to Hold Back Devastating Flood Waters

Soldiers bailed flood water Wednesday that seeped through dikes protecting this industrial city, while oil workers in life jackets tried to keep partly submerged wells pumping in China’s largest oil field.

The raging Songhua River punched through two 100-foot-long dikes in Harbin, forcing people protecting the dikes to flee and cutting traffic on a highway bridge in the northeastern provincial capital of 3 million people, the state-run New China News Agency reported.

Unusually heavy seasonal rain has prompted the worst flooding in 44 years on central China’s Yangtze River and potentially the worst in 50 years in the northeast. More than 2,000 people have died nationwide, and economic losses total at least $24 billion.

Flooding in the northeast also poses one of the severest economic risks. The Nen River threatens to overwhelm the Daqing oil field, which accounts for at least a third of the country’s production.

More than 260,000 soldiers, oil workers and civilians have worked round-the-clock to hold the Nen back. Local officials interviewed by China Central Television said wells were continuing to pump oil. CCTV footage showed oil workers in orange life vests using boats to repair and check wells.

A 9-mile dike, the last defense protecting Daqing city’s 2.3 million people, was completed Tuesday.

In Harbin, soldiers guarded a 5-foot-high retaining wall of metal rods and wood planks built atop a 15-mile-long levee protecting the city. State television showed soldiers using shovels and washbasins to bail water leaking through the sandbag dikes.