Chinese authorities report on Wednesday that several villages are completely submerged, and rescue workers in Anhui Province are picking up those in need in inflatable boats.

Tuesday's landslide in the neighboring province of Hubei has made rescue work more difficult, as the ground masses blocked a tributary of the Yangtze River, which led to the creation of a lake that risks flooding several villages and requiring further evacuation.

Dams have broken

Since a few weeks ago, several provinces have raised the level to the highest on the warning scale for extreme floods and dust collapses. Some smaller ponds have already burst due to the rain.

Reuters visited a small dam in Yangshuo that burst in early July, causing major flooding on roads and farms.

- The water rose over the edge, and then the walls collapsed. The water rushed towards us in the village. I have never seen such a flood in my entire life, says Lou Qiyuan, who is 81 years old and who helped build the dam in the sixties.

Great concern about rising water levels

When Reuters was on site a week or so after the landslide, about 100 meters of dust wall was missing. It was one of China's 94,000 aging dams, and now there is great concern about what will happen when the rain continues to raise the water level in them.

In 2006, the Chinese Minister of Water Affairs said that more than 3,000 dams had broken down in China between 1954 and 2005 due to poor maintenance. Authorities have now worked to reinforce the old dams and increase the frequency of inspections, but the highest level of warning fearing extreme floods and dust collapses has now been issued in Anhui and Jiangxi provinces.