Authorities in central China blew up a dam on Sunday to release the rising waters behind it amid widespread flooding across the country that has claimed many lives.
The state-owned CCTV network reported that the dam on the Chuhe River in Anhui province was destroyed with explosives early Sunday morning, after which the water level was expected to drop more than 2 feet.
Water levels in many rivers, including the mighty Yangtze, have been unusually high this year due to torrential rains.
The explosion of dams and embankments to discharge water was an extreme response used during the worst floods in China in recent years in 1998, when more than 2,000 people died and nearly 3 million homes were destroyed.
Last week, the gigantic Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze opened three floodgates when the water level behind the massive dam rose more than 50 feet above the level of the flood. Another flood ridge is expected to hit the dam on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, soldiers and workers have been testing the strength of the embankments and propping them up with sandbags and rocks. On Saturday, firefighters and others finished completing a 620-foot break at Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, which caused flooding in 15 villages and agricultural fields in Jiangxi province. More than 14,000 people were evacuated.
Seasonal floods affect large parts of China annually, especially in its central and southern regions, but have been especially severe this summer. More than 150 people have died or are missing in the floods and landslides caused by the torrential rains, 23 of them since Thursday alone.
Some 1.8 million people have been evacuated, and the direct losses attributed to the floods are estimated at more than 49 billion yuan ($ 7 billion), according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.
Major cities have been saved so far, but concern has grown over Wuhan and other downstream metropolises that host tens of millions of people.
