2010-07-14 08:26

HEFEI - Authorities in East China's Anhui province planned to blast a leaking dike on a swollen branch of the Yangtze River to prevent flood-waters inundating villages.

Armed police in the operation in Tongcheng city, said late on Tuesday, that they had prepared the explosives and planned to blast the check dam in Qingcao township on the Dasha River at around midnight.

However, parts of explosive facilities were damaged by a sudden flood at around 10 pm, making the plan difficult to implement, local television news said.

A 300-strong team of armed police had been laying sandbags along the riverbank of Qingcao township, and heavy machinery, including trucks and excavators, had been dumped into the river to slow the speed of the water coming through the 200-meter-long break in the dikes.

But authorities feared the measures might not be able to hold the water when heavy rains hit the area again. Meteorological authorities have forecast another round of heavy rain in the area over next three days.

The decision to blast the dike was made by the local disaster relief headquarters, after they called in experts, army officials and engineers for a meeting in Tongcheng on Tuesday to consider the options.

Heavy rainfall, that has been hitting East China's Anhui province since July 8, caused one death in Tongling, Anhui on Tuesday morning, when three villagers in Tongling were buried by a mountain landslide caused by heavy rainfall at 8:30 am. One of the villagers died in hospital.

"Torrential rainfall, moving southward along the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, is likely to decrease, yet there will still be heavy rainfall in some parts of southern Anhui," said Wang Dongyong, deputy director of Anhui Meteorological Observatory.

Cai Zhengzhong, spokesperson of Anhui Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said that the province will still be under severe flood-prevention in the following two days.

Since July 8, about 4 million people in the province have been affected by the floods and 37, 000 people have been evacuated. About 17,700 houses were damaged, according to official figures released on Tuesday.