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CNN Live At Daybreak

An Update on the Flooding in China

Aired August 23, 2002 - 05:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Turning our attention now to China, the threat of flooding from a massive rain swollen lake in center China has forced a quarter of a million people from their homes.
Mike Chinoy, our senior Asia correspondent, joins us live from Hong Kong with the latest -- good morning, Mike.

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

It is a race against time in the southern Chinese province of Hunan around Dongting Lake, the second largest fresh water lake in China. A flood surge coming down the mighty Yangtze River is expected to reach that lake on Sunday and a huge emergency operation continues now trying to shore up dikes around this lake. The fear is that if the lake bursts its banks that tens of millions of people in the surrounding area, the heartland of China's rice growing area, could be affected.

Officials have been given some glimmer of hope because the weather has improved. For the second day in a row it's sunny. The weather forecast is for no rain until early next week. Meanwhile, on the areas around the banks of the river already many hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes because of the flooding and the work to shore up the dikes, to fill sandbags, is continuing around the clock. Civilians and the Chinese Army involved in that.

China's not the only place in this part of the world that's suffering from the effects of floods from the annual summer monsoon rains. In Vietnam, one of Asia's other great rivers, the Mekong, has been overflowing its banks. The Mekong is at its highest level in eight years.

In neighboring Laos, Cambodia just to the south is also suffering, and in Nepal and India rains have caused many hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes and have caused many deaths. One of the big problems in India as the flood waters rise, poisonous snakes forced out of their holes in the ground and many people reportedly hurt or killed by snake bites from those poisonous snakes swimming around in the flood waters -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Poisonous snakes, they have to worry about that, too. Unbelievable.

Why does China keep having these floods? You keep telling us that they're used to these things. CHINOY: Well, floods have been a scourge of China for generations. Critics say that one of the big problems in recent years has been massive environmental degradation as economic development has marched forward in China. Interestingly, Lake Dongting, at the center of this crisis, 150 years ago had recovered more than 2,000 square miles. Now its size is less than half that. The whole area around it has been built up. The trees along the banks of the lake have been cut down to make way for communities, for rice fields. And so the lake is simply not able to absorb waters from the Yangtze and other rivers that come pouring in the way it used to.

And that means that when you have these annual heavy summer monsoon rains, the whole region becomes much more vulnerable to flooding -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Got you.

Mike Chinoy reporting live for us from China.

Thanks for the update.

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