The Great Hechuan Flood

This post is two weeks too late, but it’s still worth discussing and I wanted to wait until I could post pictures.

A few weeks ago thanks to a substantial amount of rain in neighboring Sichuan province, tributaries of several small rivers that flow into the Yangtze River flooded. This included the main river that runs through my area, the Jialing River. I had noticed some rain and saw several odd things going on around downtown, but was unaware of the flood risk until I got a text from my waiban telling me to stock up on food and water. Then I put a few things together.

Earlier that day I had taken my usual route to the supermarket and noticed more shops were closed than usual. On top of that, I noticed that a ton of shops looked to be boxing up all of their belongings. I attributed this to some sort of odd spring-cleaning, but thought it strange they had decided to do it all at once. Finally, on my walk home, I spotted two different police cars slowly driving through the streets announcing something through a loud speaker. Lacking the language skills to understand it, I chalked it up to some kind of public service announcement about the importance of street sweeping. (That was an actual announcement my students' informed me of last time we were out.)

When I got the text warning me to be careful when I leave my apartment and to stock up on supplies, I still didn't quite believe all of this worry was necessary. It had barely rained and the river was over a mile away! My school's director assured me the danger was real when I ran into her, and she commented on how in recent years flooding had been getting worse and worse thanks to several dam projects downriver.

So the next day after class when no flash floods had interrupted my lecture, I decided to stroll out and have a peek at the river. I didn’t have to go far to find it. The river had inched its way up to my school’s front doorstep. I was shocked. At this point I had to give major props to the local government; it seems that all of their preparations were well advised. While there ended up being pretty extensive property damage, because of the advance warning most shops saved their goods and no lives were lost in my town. Sadly, other flooded areas were not quite so lucky.

Now the efficiency of clean-up… well, that’s another matter: