With few places in China to escape the heavy rainfall forecast for the coming days, it’s worth a sobering reminder of events this time 90 years ago, when millions perished in devastating floods in Nanjing and across east China.
According to reports, meteorology is warning of concentrated precipitation in many regions of Anhui, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Hainan, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Tibet and Yunnan. Also not spared will be Beijing, Chongqing and Tianjin. The rains are in addition to be accompanied by increasingly high temperatures and humidity.
It’s a grim reminder of 1931 indeed. This was the year when, between June and August, high rainfall in the spring was compounded by no less than nine cyclones (the region’s July average is two). This produced the Yangtze River’s highest levels since records began and what is perhaps the worst flooding in history.
In the book. “The Nature of Disaster in China; The 1931 Yangzi River Flood” (Cambridge University Press; 2018), Chris Courtney notes estimates of 3.7 to 4 million deaths, writing that such theories enjoy “great currency online, helping the 1931 flood to secure its position on sensationalist lists of the world’s deadliest disasters”.
But the numbers were an amalgamation. An official report put the number of drownings at 140,069. In the flood’s wake came diseases, including cholera, measles, malaria, dysentery and schistosomiasis. And then there was widespread famine caused by the destruction of farmland.
No matter the final total, it is generally accepted that the floods of 1931 in Nanjing, Wuhan and the surrounding areas caused over 2 million fatalities.
Reaction to the flooding ranged from tragic to comical. A British Movietone News report from the time available on YouTube captures local people’s efforts at flood protection by building improvised dykes en masse and the citizens of Hankou (Wuhan) wading in the streets.
Enterprising locals who normally pulled people around in rickshaws also suddenly had a new opportunity on their hands. According the website, China Dialogue, “Those who could not afford the grossly inflated fares took to the water in a bizarre flotilla of improvised vessels: rafts made from doors, inflated goatskins and wooden bathtubs. Some people even emptied out coffins and used them as canoes”.
But the chances of a repeat of 1931 are remote to non existent.
After the floods, the then Republican government established the National Flood Relief Commission and brought in numerous experts. One was famed aviator, Charles Lindberg, who 4 years prior had made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris. He and his wife had been commissioned to make an aerial survey of the flood zone.
And such surveys continue to play an important role in today’s flood-prevention work. Only now they are done by drones, and with prevention rather than cure in mind.
According to a report latest year by Xinhua, Nanjing has put more than ¥8 billion into dredging waterways and reinforcing 200 kilometres of embankments. The drones help enormously with inspections.
Technology is also lending a helping hand in all manner of ways unavailable 90 years ago.
In cooperation with Australia, the Yangtze River Flood Control and Management Project began in 1998 with the aims to increase flood forecast accuracy, extend warning times and improve flood management decision making.
The initiative is covered in the research paper, “A New Systems Approach to Flood Management in the Yangtze River, China” (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg; 2009) by H. Betts, S. Markar and S. Clark. In it, the authors talk of the integrated, hierarchal intelligent systems employed by the project. “These included data acquisition, data transfer and management, flood forecasting, numerical modelling, hydro-metrological, flood management information, and options analysis systems. These “intelligent” systems are encapsulated into an overall decision support system (DSS) and accessed through a web-based visual display system”, wrote the authors.
Elsewhere, slap bang in the middle of the Yangtze, the islet of Jiangxinzhou has historically been a flood hot spot. Last year though, a 22.5-kilometre long dyke was completed. At 12 metres high and 8 metres wide, it can ward off almost anything the Yangtze can throw at it.
What it all means is… Don’t panic. While it’s going to be a hot, wet and humid week, Nanjing’s got our back. And we’ll be staying dry. Relatively.
