Chinese troops join civilians in attempt to slow down flooding

BEIJING - Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and residents stacked sandbags, piled gravel and plugged breaches Thursday along dikes surrounding an enormous lake in central China that is threatening to overflow and inundate lowlands where millions of people live.

About 15,000 troops joined 930,000 civilians in round-the-clock inspections of flood barriers in Hunan province as torrents from days of rain continued surging down several rivers into Dongting Lake, pushing water more than seven feet above danger levels in some areas, the government-run China News Service reported.

State media said the waters of two main tributaries, the Xiang and the Zi, peaked near all-time highs and began to subside this evening. But water in the 1,560-square-mile lake -- the size of Rhode Island -- continued to rise and was not expected to stop until Sunday.

Local officials said the water has already climbed to levels not seen since 1998, when China's worst floods in decades killed more than 4,100 people across the nation. Flooding has killed more than 1,100 people across China this summer and left about 1.3 million homeless, according to the Red Cross Society of China, which has appealed for international aid.

"The situation here is very tense," said a flood-control official in the city of Yiyang, on the southern bank of Dongting Lake about 500 miles west of Shanghai. "We've been watching every movement of the floodwaters 24 hours a day for the last several days. Our goal is to prevent a disaster. We're trying our best."

At least twice Thursday afternoon, soldiers scrambled to plug up breaks in the dikes, gaining control by dumping more than 200 tons of sand and stones, state media reported. Many of the mobilized troops are veterans of previous flood-control campaigns. Over the past few days, they have rescued more than 3,200 people trapped by rising waters.

Dongting sits at the junction of several rivers that carry water from mountains to the south, as well as the mighty Yangtze River, which floods almost every year. The Chinese have waged an annual battle for centuries to contain flooding from the lake. But life in the area has grown more precarious in recent decades as settlers have reclaimed more and more farmland, squeezing the lake to half its size and leaving it little room to expand when the summer rains come.

After the disastrous floods in 1998, the government sought to reverse the process. Earlier this month, it reported it had relocated 300,000 residents and returned their land to the lake, expanding its surface area by 20 percent. The government also set aside $1.9 billion last year for a five-year program to strengthen dikes and improve flood drainage around Dongting.