Gaaaah.

[camwyn]

Heard from one of my online penpals today. Nice fellow. Lives in Wuhan, China. We exchange emails every couple of weeks, although sometimes it takes the form of Yahoo! cards. Anyway, I'd mentioned my parents had gone to WVa for a week to help out in an area that gets devastated every so often by flooding (the local industries are mining, lumber, and white-water rafting). He mentioned how the local river used to flood really horribly every twenty years or so, but it's not so bad now.

Then I saw to this BBC News article:

The 7.5 million people of the central Chinese city of Wuhan are bracing themselves for the peak of a flood surge from the Yangtze River.

Water levels in Lake Dongting - 180 kilometres (120 miles) upstream - were slowly receding on Sunday, but Wuhan officials feared their city could become the next danger zone as the flood peak rolled its way. The Hubei provincial capital has declared a state of emergency and should see water levels reach a peak in the early hours of Monday. Levels on Sunday were already 15cm above the danger point.

Gods, I hope it passes without hurting anyone.

Comments

[mtr1966.livejournal.com]

I'm in 九江, next major centre down from 武汉 to be threatened by this. Luckily I live on a hill. Still, I don't want to see a repeat of what happened here in 1998. (I wasn't here in '98, but my teaching partner was and has some real horror stories to tell.)