Reservoir release didn’t cause flood
Heavy rain behind deadly Hebei dike breach: local probe
The local government of Xingtai, North China’s Hebei Province announced on Sunday that the breach of the dike in the Qili River on Thursday night, which killed 17 people and left one missing, was caused by heavy rainfall and not by intentional discharge of water from a reservoir.
According to a statement published on the city government’s official Sina Weibo account, local authorities consulted meteorological data and examined the Qili River and the Dongchuankou Reservoir upstream and have concluded that the dike was breached as a result of heavy rainfall rather than by a discharge of floodwater from the reservoir.
Villagers on Sunday scathingly accused the local government of failing to warn them of the deadly flood that swept through the area. Torrential rain and floods killed 34 people and left 13 people missing in Xingtai as of Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. Meanwhile, Some 9,200 homes in the area were still without electricity.
Four officials – Xingtai economic development district Party chief Duan Xiaoyong, Dongwang township Party chief Zhang Guowei, Shijiazhuang Bureau of Transport Chief Engineer He Zhankui and deputy head of Jingxing county Jia Yanting – had been suspended for dereliction of duty over their response to the floods, Xinhua reported.
According to a separate announcement on the government’s Weibo account on Saturday citing statements by Deputy Mayor of Xingtai Qiu Wenshuang, two separate in- stances of flooding – the overflow of the Dongchuankou Reservoir upstream of Xingtai and flooding from heavy rainfall in the mountainous area in the town’s west – contributed to the breach of the Qili River dike at a narrow point in Daxian village, flooding 12 villages in the economic development district.
Qiu denied that the flooding was caused by an intentional discharge of water from the Dongchuankou Reservoir, as the reservoir lacks a mechanism to control the flow of water through its spillway.
The river swelled at a volume of 580 cubic meters per second, while the dike at the bottleneck was designed to handle a rise of 40 cubic meters per second at most, Zhang Yinglin, a water specialist in Xingtai, was quoted as saying in an announcement on Saturday.
“Although the dike was caused by peak flooding, human factors, such as the local government’s failure to establish a sound alert system and officials’ failure to organize evacuations before the flood crested, worsened the situation,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said Monday, adding that local watercourses had also been damaged by economic development.
The watercourse in Daxian village was blocked with soil due to the construction of a new heating system during the Spring Festival, news site caixin. com reported Saturday.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs announced Monday on its official website that the Chinese central government has allocated 250 million yuan ($ 37.4 million) to disaster relief efforts in the flood- hit province of Hebei, Xinhua reported.