Floodwaters reach the feet of the Leshan Giant Buddha after heavy rainfall, in Leshan, Sichuan Province, China August 18, 2020. China Daily via REUTERS
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Floods in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in China forced authorities to evacuate more than 100,000 people on Tuesday, threatening a 1,200-year-old World Heritage Site.
Staff, police and volunteers used sandbags to try to protect the 71-meter (233-foot) Leshan Giant Buddha, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southwestern province of Sichuan, as muddy floodwaters crossed the toes for the first time since 1949. came up, broadcaster CCTV reported.
Sichuan, through which the Yangtze River flows, on Tuesday drew its emergency response to the maximum level to deal with a new round of flowing rainfall.
The Yangtze Water Resources Commission, the government body that oversees the river, issued a red warning late Tuesday, saying that water at some monitoring stations would expect “guaranteed” levels of flood protection by more than 5 meters to be higher.
The Three Gorges Project, a massive hydroelectric facility designed in part to tame floods on the Yangtze, is expected to increase water flow to 74,000 cubic meters per second on Wednesday, the highest since it was built, it said. Ministry of Water Resources.
The project limits the amount of water flowing by storing it in its reservoir, which for more than a month is more than 10 meters higher than its official warning level.
The facility was forced Tuesday to increase water discharge volumes to “reduce flood pressure,” the water ministry said.
Authorities have been slow to show that the cascade of giant dams and reservoirs built along the upper reaches of the Yangtze have protected the area from the worst of the floods this year, although critics say that they can make things worse.
Report by David Stanway; Edited by Stephen Coates
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