Since the beginning of July, torrential rains and severe flooding in 10 provinces mostly along the Yangtze River have left more than 1,000 people dead and forced the evacuation of millions. The last major flood was in 1998, when 4,000 people died and 18 million were displaced.
So far the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges dam, completed last year, has had to handle peak flow of 70,000 cubic metres per second when is designed to handle at least 100,000.
The heavy rains are forecast to continue for some weeks with the imminent threat being tropical storm Chanthu, which hit land on Thursday. In fact at 6am that morning it was worryingly upgraded to a Category 1 typhoon. Hopefully the dam will be equal to the task but if it isn’t, there’s that nasty 2,363 level on the Shanghai Composite still looming.