As of 10 a.m. on Sunday, emergency workers had used gravel, stones and other materials to seal off a 65-metre (213-foot) section of the breached levee at Dongting Lake in Hunan province, local media reported.
The dam in Tuanzhou town expanded from 10 metres (32 feet) early Friday morning to about 225 metres (800 feet) by Saturday afternoon, flooding an area of 46 square kilometres (17.7 square miles), according to a report by The Paper.
As of late Sunday night, work to seal the breach was progressing at an average speed of four metres per hour, the website said. Experts told the news site on Saturday that the repairs were expected to be completed within four days.
The Hunan Daily reported that as of Sunday morning, the water level of Dongting Lake had dropped and water that had accumulated at the breach site was starting to back up into the lake.
The company said water levels in the damaged area had receded and the weather had cleared, creating favorable conditions for repair work.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Emergency Management allocated 540 million yuan (US$75 million) in natural disaster relief to provinces hit by floods, forest fires and geological disasters.
The Treasury said the funds would be used for search and rescue, resettlement of affected people, removal of ongoing hazards, secondary damage assessment and repair work.
The lake’s surface area more than doubled within two weeks, from 1,100 square kilometers on June 17 to 2,570 square kilometers on June 30, the paper said.
02:02
China’s Yangtze River to flood for first time in 2024, causing worst damage in 25 years in some areas
China’s Yangtze River to flood for first time in 2024, causing worst damage in 25 years in some areas
More than 5,000 residents of Tuanzhou were evacuated after reports of a problem with the dike’s pipes first came in on Friday afternoon, the Global Times reported. No deaths or injuries have been reported so far from the breach.
Thousands of local rescue workers and equipment including boats, trucks, helicopters and drones were deployed to the scene of the breach on Saturday to begin the containment effort, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Water levels in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, China’s longest river and a major ocean vein, are expected to remain high for up to two weeks in an area that includes at least eight provinces and the cities of Shanghai and Chongqing.
The China Meteorological Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a joint statement on Sunday warning that heavy rains could fall next week in some parts of the country, including the southwestern Sichuan Basin, one of China’s main rice-producing regions, and could flood farmland.
