More Rain In Flood-Ravaged China

A pre-dawn thunderstorm packing high winds and torrential rains hit the area around central China's Dongting Lake early Monday, raising the threat to already strained dikes protecting several cities and dozens of villages where hundreds of thousands of people live.

The rain-bloated lake in Hunan province had started to recede Sunday after a flood crest in the Yangtze River safely passed, but storms could push water levels back up again.

Floods and landslides have killed about 1,000 people across China since the rainy season began in June. More than 200 of those deaths were reported in Hunan.

Forecasters had predicted that the northern part of Hunan and the western provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan could be deluged by up to two more inches of rain by Tuesday. The storm came after days of clear skies and hot weather.

The lake is already about six feet above the danger mark at which officials feel there is a threat to the dikes rimming the 1,560-square-mile Dongting Lake - China's second largest - and along rivers flowing into it.

At 5 a.m., lightning streaked the skies and rain poured down on the streets of Yueyang, a lakeside city of 600,000, where residents were already beginning their week. Some sloshed through streets, barefoot.

"Of course we're worried about this rain. If this continues, it could get very serious," said Zhuan, a man sitting at a food stall on the waterfront, where puddles are already ankle-deep in some places.

Xu Bang, a taxi-driver, was more optimistic.

"This rain is nothing," Xu said. "Don't worry. This place will never flood."

After about three hours, the storm abated and turned into a steady drizzle.

State media said a crest on the Yangtze River reached Yueyang late Saturday and pushed Dongting to its highest level this year.

The peak safely passed and the elaborate, 580-mile system of dikes around the lake - fortified and protected in the past week by an army of more than 1 million soldiers and residents - remained intact.

Water levels have dropped 0.35 inches at Chenglingji, near Yueyang, where the Yangtze meets the lake.

While thousands of homes along Dongting's edge outside the embankment have flooded and islands in the lake have been swamped, residents are used to the effect of flooding, a near-annual occurrence in the area.

Life has gone on mostly undisrupted in Yueyang.

Further south, however, villagers in Yangliuyuan struggled to cope with waters up to 13 feet deep in some areas.

"The impact on our lives is huge," said farmer Wu Yuanxi.

About 2,000 people have been evacuated to nearby schools and public buildings, said France Hurtubise, a Beijing-based regional spokeswoman for the International Federation of the Red Cross.

"It's sad and it's terrible. There's water as far as the eye can see," Hurtubise said. Only tips of telephone poles were visible and many houses were completely submerged. Remaining residents waded their way through daily chores.

In the west, scores of houses along the Huarong river, which flows into the Dongting Lake, were flooded, some up to their roofs.

Zhang Jinchun, 58, left his home about two weeks ago.

"When the water level rose one level, we moved one level," Zhang said.

"The situation now is serious. We're scared our homes will collapse, we're scared for our future generations," he said. "If things get worse, what'll we do?"

After coursing through Dongting, the flood crest is headed for the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan in Hubei province just to the north of the lake.

A state of emergency has been declared along the flood-swollen Yangtze River in the major industrial city of Wuhan in Hubei province.

Li, a Wuhan flood control official, said inspection crews were working around the clock to prepare for the flood crest, which was expected to hit the city on Tuesday morning.

"I've worked in this office for over 20 years and I witnessed the 1998 floods. This year, the water levels are not as high as in 1998," said Li.

Nonetheless, nearly 20,000 civilians and flood control officials are posted along river bank in Wuhan, with tons of sand and gravel to shore up the embankments.

Officials in Wuhan say embankments protecting their city have been reinforced considerably since 1998, when China's worst floods in half a century killed 4,000 people.

Germany, where floodwaters are receding after causing billions in damage in the past two weeks, is providing one million sandbags to help protect Wuhan.

In Changsha, Hunan's capital, officials emerging from a flood emergency meeting said waters are expected to remain high through early September.

Teams of six people have been posted every 165 feet to watch the dikes along the Xiangjiang river, which runs through Changsha and into Dongting Lake. The city has ordered 2,000 troops and 300,000 public employees to help battle the high waters.