Dike Blew up to Release Floodwater of Huaihe River

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 06, 2003

Dike Blew up to Release Floodwater of Huaihe River

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An explosion, designated by the flood control and drought relief headquarters of east China's Anhui Province, blew an outlet in the dike of Tangduo Lake of the Huaihe River at 3:18 pm Sunday to release floodwater.

The explosion opened an outlet of 1,500 meters wide in the lower reaches of Tangduo Lake for floodwater to be released into the fields outside the dike. The floodwater submerged the road by the dike and the trees along the road very quickly.

Before the blasting, all the 17,000 people had been evacuated from the areas that were expected to be affected by the released floodwater.

With a capacity of 400 million cubic meters, Tangduo Lake had experienced ten explosions for flood control in history with the latest time in 1991.

According to officials with the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters, another dike blasting will be conducted in the upper reaches of Tangduo Lake in two hours.

China's flooding season usually starts around June and ebbs by September. The Ministry of Civil Affairs said last week that 148 people had died by late June from floods.

Widespread floods in the summer of 2002 killed more than 1,500 people and caused damages estimated at 68 billion yuan, or US$8.2 billion.

Last year's floods were the worst since 1998, when weeks of relentless rain on the Yangtze River triggered floods that killed about 4,000 people.

Expert said the world's largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, will help tame the 6,300-km (3,900-mile) Yangtze, whose annual floods killed 300,000 people in the last century alone.

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