Engorged with more heavy rains, China’s mighty Yangtze River is cresting again, bringing fears of further destruction. The seasonal floods that already have left 141 people dead or missing have grown in force since last month.
The heavy rains are putting renewed pressure on the massive Three Gorges Dam that straddles the river upstream of the city of Wuhan in Hubei province.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the rate of flow in the reservoir behind the dam would hit a record for the year on Friday night, at 55,000 square meters (almost 600,000 square feet) per second.
Rivers in the Yangtze system have broken their banks in places, and in Hubei, a helicopter was used to drop stones into the breach to block the inrushing waters.
Flooding since the beginning of the month has forced evacuations of around 1.8 million people in 24 provinces, mainly in southern China. Direct losses attributed to flooding are estimated at more than 49 billion yuan ($7 billion), according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.
Flood waters reached as high as 1.4 meters (almost 5 feet) in Linshui county in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the ministry’s rescue department reported.