New Flood Threat in South China
Officials declared a flood emergency Wednesday in southern China’s Hunan province, where a lake about the size of Rhode Island is threatening to burst its banks and engulf millions of people.
Heavy rains continued to drench parts of Asia, bringing the death toll since July to nearly 2,000, including at least 60 people who were killed Wednesday when a landslide swept away a village in Nepal. In India, at least 10 people were washed away after a dam burst.
In China, rivers swollen by a tropical storm poured into Dongting Lake. More than 7,000 soldiers had been mobilized to reinforce embankments around the lake that shield more than 10 million people and 1.6 million acres of farmland, state radio said.
Dongting--China’s second-largest freshwater lake, covering about 1,400 square miles--is more than 6 feet over the flood-warning mark, its highest level in almost three years.
But it is still short of its record, reached in 1998 when the worst floods in decades killed more than 4,000 people in China, state television said.
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