Waters rising in China with prospects of more storms

YUEYANG, China -- The water level in central China's Dongting Lake surged well past the danger mark Saturday as forecasters predicted a new round of showers could further swell rivers flowing into the lake.

The storms, expected during the next three days, could strain dikes on the lake and along the rivers, threatening six cities and dozens of villages in Hunan province.

Despite the rising water, people near the lake went about business as usual, calmed by a common belief among flood workers, dike monitors and local residents that the embankments would hold. "I think they're strong enough. No problem," waitress Huang Xiaohua said.

In Yueyang, a lakeside city of 600,000, people sang karaoke outside a supermarket about a minute's walk from the lake. Vendors along the waterfront were doing a bustling business serving cold drinks and stir-frying meals. The pier was full of boats.

An official in Hunan's antiflood headquarters said Dongting's water level was about 6 feet above the danger mark Saturday. The lake was rising by half an inch per hour, the official said.

Authorities define the danger mark as the point when the water puts deadly amounts of pressure on the elaborate system of dikes at the edge of the 1,560-square-mile Dongting, China's second-largest freshwater lake.

In the neighboring province of Hubei, officials declared a state of emergency in Wuhan, Xinhua News Agency reported. China's longest river, the Yangtze, flows through the city, and the waterway was 6 inches above its warning level and threatened to rise if the forecasted storms come.

At Dongting, officials were keeping a close watch on the lake's 580 miles of dikes, and more than 1-million workers and soldiers have been mobilized to fortify the embankments during the past week, authorities have said.

Other parts of China have suffered flooding since the rainy season began in June, and nearly 1,000 people have been reported killed by high waters and landslides.

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