China: From the battle against the coronavirus to facing the worst flood in decades

• Live.Coronavirus, last minute
• Pandemic: Beijing does not register for the first time any contagion since the outbreak of coronavirus in a market

Leaning on the balcony of his house, facing the south bank of the Yangtze River, Sunn has been shooting videos with his mobile for days so that his friends can see how they prepare for possible floods in Wuhan. "There are operators who are 24 hours on the shore monitoring the rise in the water level. They have built walls of more than two meters with sandbags to serve as reinforcement. If it continues to rain so hard, the river will overflow" , Sunn assures.

Near his building, the entrance to catch the ferry to the other bank of the Yangtze has been sealed with a brick wall supported by more sandbags. "First, the coronavirus swallowed the city, and now the water threatens to sink us again. Emotionally, it will be difficult to endure another disaster," says Gao Hu , a Wuhan resident who works as a receptionist at a downtown hotel.

A few days ago, local authorities released a report explaining that due to the geography of the city, also surrounded by Dongting Lake and the Hanjiang River at the top, and Poyang Lake at the bottom, Wuhan would be vulnerable to flooding. if the heavy rains continue. Is a new alarm state looming? "We have already spent 75 days locked up at home. Everyone associates the name of our city with the origin of a pandemic that has killed many people. This year we are already covered in misfortunes, we do not need more," says Gao.

In Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, floods have already left 14 dead and five missing . Also of concern is the situation where the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric station (2,309 meters long and 185 high), 370 kilometers from Wuhan, may be found. On social networks, many users began to share photographs from Google Maps showing the damaged walls of this dam. Although the Chinese authorities have clarified that the structure is solid and that there is no danger of collapse.

It had been 22 years since China experienced floods like the ones that are hitting the center and south of the country during this early summer. The torrential rains do not stop, they have hit more than a dozen provinces with virulence and the data is alarming : 433 rivers have overflowed, the floods have affected 37 million people, almost three million have been evacuated, at least 141 have dead or missing and more than 28,000 houses have collapsed.

Zheng Guoguang , Deputy Minister for Emergency Management, has pointed out that since 1961 the Yangtze Basin has not registered such abundant rainfall. On Sunday, China raised its flood response alert to the second highest level. The Asian giant has a four-tier emergency response system, with tier one representing the most severe.

In recent days, headlines about the pandemic have given way to news about the flood. The front pages of the newspapers were no longer starring in the images of the long lines of the residents of Beijing waiting to pass the coronavirus test, but scenes such as that of the students from Huangshuan (1,300 kilometers south of Beijing) attending the selectivity test in boats for the heavy floods that had turned their streets into rivers.

Or the images of the Ming Dynasty bridges and their relics from almost 500 years ago submerged under the rivers and lakes of the eastern province of Jiangxi. There, the levels of China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang, have been rising at an unprecedented rate, reaching 22.65 meters, well above the alert level of 19.50 meters. On Saturday night, more than 500 soldiers arrived in this area to help reinforce more than nine kilometers of the lake shore. More than 432,000 people have also been evacuated from their homes, and authorities have stated that measures considered to be "wartime" are being taken.

In the cities where the Yangtze River runs, the longest in Asia, the Government has sent the army to build levees and canals to release water. Also, from the National Development and Reform Commission, they have announced that they will send 309 million yuan (about 30 million euros) in aid funds to the affected regions. According to the public agency Xinhua, the economic losses from the floods amount to more than 82.23 trillion yuan (10 trillion euros).

The strongest coronavirus crisis in China, still pending possible new outbreaks, was already over. Now, the second world power has to face floods that, in addition to taking more lives ahead, threatens to slow down their economic recovery after the pandemic.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Wuhan
• China
• Asia
• Coronavirus
• Covid 19

Direct Witness Wuhan Whistleblowers: "The authorities lied to us. Many people have died for acting late"

AsiaOne morning in the massive tests of coronavirus in Beijing

China The outbreak coronavirus in a Beijing market comes from the European strain

See links of interest

• News
• Programming
• Translator
• Calendar
• Horoscope
• Classification
• League calendar
• Films
• Themes
• Galicia Euskadi election results

• Alavés - Getafe
• Villarreal - Real Sociedad
• Almería - Rayo Vallecano
• Sporting de Gijón - Málaga
• Granada - Real Madrid, live