Saturday, July 11, was a sleepless night for Wu Shengsong. This is the 5th consecutive day he has been on patrol duty on the banks of the Taized River in Ba Duong District, Jiangxi Province, eastern China.
Right after starting the shift, thunder and lightning arose. Wu stood silent and scared, scared of the storm on his head and the ground at his feet. I was a little worried. The rain is expected to last for several days, Wu told SCMP.
Wu is a cadet of Wanli village, near Ba Duong lake, the largest freshwater lake in China. By the morning of July 12, after heavy rain and floodwaters from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the water level of Ba Duong Lake had risen to an all-time high of more than 22.5 meters, causing many towns and villages across the dike to be at risk of flooding.
Wanli is just one of many villages hit by floods. Flooding over the past month has affected 27 of the continent's 31 provinces. According to official figures, nearly 34 million people have been affected and at least 140 people have died or are missing.
The situation is particularly serious along the Yangtze River. According to Xinhua News Agency, 2,242km of the total 2,545km of dykes in Jiangxi are facing an extremely severe situation to control floods.
Many of the dykes are being watched by people like Wu.
On July 8, floodwaters broke the dykes, causing some low-lying villages to be submerged in water, leaving about 20,000 people without electricity or fresh water.
Wu said he received orders from superiors to patrol, as floodwaters were flowing towards the village. Wu and other villagers took turns patrolling the area, each person monitoring several hundred meters of the riverbank.
Wu uses flashlights to check for possible incidents and signs of violations. At times he stopped to look at a pipeline running across the riverbank to a fish pond on the other side. We have covered those holes with sandbags, but we need to check to see if they are intact, Wu said.
The dike watchmen stayed up all night to watch, only taking a short break. If they see signs of cracking in any place, they report it to the supervisor to send another team to fix it.
No one dares to miss a single minute. "Just one mistake would be quite dangerous. When the flood came, time was counted in minutes, Wu said.
Village residents recall when the flood came on July 8. Huang Diqun, another dyke guard, stood on a bridge when the dyke on the other side broke.
I saw the water hitting the riverbank, with a sound of cracking, and suddenly everything fell down, he said.
The houses fell into the water, house after house, the villagers were afraid to run across the bridge or climb onto the roof to ensure safety.
All of Wu's rice fields were flooded. Wu said that if the water receded quickly, he could have saved some crops, but he said the flood could last another 2 or 3 months.
Along the Yang Zi River, many lakes and river branches are still rising and the water has nowhere to flow.
Wu could only try to prevent another dike break and pray for the best. All we can do is watch the game, Wu said.
