At present, the danger situation of Tuanzhou is basically under control, but it is still necessary to pay attention to future risk points.
On July 6, Yueyang, Hunan, aerial photography of the embankment breach.
At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of July 5, a pipe surge occurred in the first-line embankment of Tuanzhou Yuandongting Lake in Huarong County, Yueyang City, Hunan. At 5:48 a.m., the levee burst after emergency containment measures failed.
According to the Hunan Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters Office, as of 12 o'clock on the 6th, the width of the embankment breach was about 220 meters, the average water depth in the embankment was about 5 meters, and the inundation area was 47.64 square kilometers (accounting for 92.5% of the total area of Tuanzhou Dam, and the safety zone of the embankment has not been flooded for the time being), and the water level difference between Dongting Lake and the embankment was about 10 centimeters.
At 1 p.m. on the 6th, the embankment began to be plugged and Helong, which is expected to be completed in about four days.
Within an hour, the breach had expanded to 100 meters
Huarong County is surrounded by water on three sides, and the Yangtze River and Dongting Lake form a north-south support trend in the periphery and meet in the eastern part of the county. Zhuzikou Town is located in the south of Huarong County, east of Dongting Lake, and the first-line flood control embankment stretches for more than 30,000 meters. Affected by the recent continuous heavy rainfall and upstream water, the water level in the Zhuzikou section of Dongting Lake continued to rise, and the warning water level exceeded for the first time on July 1.
At 3:30 p.m. on July 5, Tuanzhou Township reported that the embankment of the north embankment section of the Tuanzhou Embankment had collapsed. At 3:45, the staff of the Huarong County Engineering Office arrived at the scene and found that the embankment at station number 19+450 had sunk by 1.5 meters, and there was a large amount of water on the inner slope of the embankment. They immediately mobilized vehicles loaded with sand and gravel to rush to the scene and tried to block it, but to no avail. One hour later, the width of the embankment was expanded to nearly 100 meters, and the embankment finally broke.
After receiving the information of the danger, a number of civilian rescue teams quickly assembled. The National Dawning Rescue Alliance, together with local rescue teams, formed a team of 42 people, driving 10 vehicles, with 12 boats and 1 amphibious vehicle, rushed to the scene of the embankment burst to carry out emergency rescue.
Huang Zhiyun, head of the News Section of the Propaganda Department of the Yueyang Municipal Party Committee, told "Chinese Philanthropist" that he arrived at the breach at 3 a.m. on the 6th and saw the surging lake water rushing to Tuanzhou Township. "The mouth of the embankment is visible to the naked eye and is getting bigger a little bit, and the lake water that is slowly gushing out is not so urgent, and the rescue personnel are helpless for a while at a distance of forty or fifty meters from the breach."
As of 9 a.m. on the 6th, the width of the breach exceeded 220 meters. Rescue personnel can only dump large stones at both ends of the breach to build a "" (a water conservancy project that protects a specific part of the embankment or dam body and prevents the erosion and erosion of the water flow) to slow down the erosion of the water flow on the duel and prevent the breach from expanding.
According to the local water conservancy department, it is very difficult to forcibly block the mouth at present. In the end, the solution was to start plugging the water level when the difference between the water levels on both sides of the embankment was slightly smaller or equaler. Prior to this, the organization of personnel forces to strengthen the defense of the embankment between the Tuanzhou Ridge and other embankments.
5,755 people were transferred
After the pipe burst occurred, a large amount of Dongting Lake water poured into Tuanzhou Dam. According to the data, the total area of Tuanzhou is 55.03 square kilometers, and the flood storage safety zone project will be completed in 2022, with an area of 2.7 square kilometers and a population of about 3,000 people, and an area of 52.33 square kilometers and a population of about 5,000 people outside the flood storage area. Therefore, after the breach, the local government quickly mobilized more than 700 county and rural cadres to conduct house-to-house investigations, and urgently transferred the residents in the embankment to a safe area, or to a school in the county town for centralized resettlement.
A villager in Zhuzikou told "Chinese Philanthropist" that on the evening of the 5th, the government sent trucks and buses to transfer the people of Tuanzhou Township one after another. "Eighty percent of the villagers' belongings were moved, but the levee burst came too quickly, and some villagers who lived nearby were washed away by the water before they could move their belongings." The villager said.
On July 6, in Yueyang, Hunan, in the area of Dongting Lake in Tuanzhouyuan, Huarong County, houses were flooded.
In the aftermath of the levee breach, some rescue teams began to cooperate with local authorities to evacuate people. The rescue lasted overnight, and as of 9 a.m. on the 6th, the Shuguang Rescue Alliance team had evacuated a total of 47 people.
Before and after the breach, the local government notified the masses to move quickly, but some people were still reluctant to leave. A member of the rescue team told China Philanthropist that until the morning of July 6, there were still people on the street sticking to their yards.
In order to avoid villagers left in the disaster area, the Shuguang Rescue Alliance team repeatedly investigated the area of Tuanzhou Township, and boats and amphibious vehicles went in and cleared the net twice.
On the morning of July 6, all the civil rescue teams at the scene received a notice from the local flood control and drought relief headquarters to end the rescue at 10 a.m. that day and evacuate to the periphery. This decision was made due to the safety of the rescuers and the fact that the transfer had been largely completed.
According to the official report on July 6, a total of 5,755 people were relocated and resettled, and there were no casualties.
"Compared with previous rescue operations, this breach is sudden, which tests the rapid response ability and safety management ability of the rescue team." Wang Gang, captain of the Shuguang rescue team, told China Philanthropist that in this rescue operation, there were no flooded vehicles, damaged ships, and injuries to the civilian rescue team.
The rescuers who participated in the operation generally believed that the on-site rescue force was relatively sufficient and the operation was relatively orderly.
Blocking
On the afternoon of July 6, the water level inside and outside the breach was basically level, and the water flow slowed down. This means that the conditions are ripe to close the gap and repair the levees.
According to Xinhua News Agency and other media reports, the work of breaking the gap has already begun. Helong adopted the method of simultaneous operation on both sides of the breach and finally completed the closed meeting. On the east-west embankment, trucks enter at both ends, carrying stones into the breach, which are then filled in by bulldozers and paved forward.
China Aneng Group, which is responsible for the work of Helong, is the only state-owned enterprise in China with natural disaster emergency rescue and engineering construction as its main business, and has rich experience in disaster relief and rescue, and has handled the rescue, drainage and flood control work of many breaches across the country. As of 20:00 on the 6th, the 226-meter breach of Dongting Lake has been blocked for 66 meters. Zhang Xuanzhuang, director of the safety and environmental protection department of the First Engineering Bureau of China Aneng Group, said that the project period is currently expected to be about 4 days.
Many towns and villages along Dongting Lake were expanded from the historical reclamation of land around the lake. Embankments were erected around the new land that had been extended, and many units called "mounds" were formed. According to the Atlas of the Historical Changes of Dongting Lake by the Hunan Provincial Department of Land and Resources, the mounds around Dongting Lake are divided into three categories: key mounds with dense population and economic concentration, general mounds with slightly lower economic volume, and flood storage mounds near the lake and with low terrain. The last type of flood pond is designated as a flood storage area, which will be used as a temporary storage area in the flood diversion project when the water level rises sharply and floods to protect the safety of a larger part of the area.
Tuanzhou is a flood storage wall. According to the local flood control plan, if the flood can be successfully controlled within the flood storage area and the villagers can be quickly relocated in advance, it means that the flood is within the controllable range. Hao Nan, head of Zhuo Ming Credit Aid, confirmed to China Philanthropist that the flood is basically controllable at present, "The water is basically controlled in Tuanzhou and is kept." ”
On July 6, in Yueyang, Hunan, in the Dongting Lake area of Tuanzhouyuan, Huarong County, rescuers from the Blue Sky Rescue Team of Shuangfeng County, Loudi City, rescued trapped villagers ashore.
However, Hao Nan also mentioned that according to the information sent by the forward rescue team, the town of Conscience Fort, which is located on the west side of Tuanzhou and belongs to Qianliang Lake, has been flooded in a small area, which requires increased vigilance.
The grain lake and the Tuanzhou wall face each other across the river, and about half of the area belongs to the key wall. Therefore, it is particularly important to protect the embankment between the two embankments and prevent flooding into densely populated areas. The flood control embankment in the entire Qianliang Lake area is divided into two sections, Qianbei and Qiannan, with a total length of 80.271 kilometers, and is the town with the heaviest flood control task in Junshan District, Yueyang City, to which it belongs.
One of the important flood control nodes is an embankment in front of Qiannan. The location of this breach is located at the north end of Tuanzhou Yuan, and this earthen embankment is located on the northwest side of the breach, which can be described as the focus of the "second line of defense". Chen Wenping, a second-level inspector of the Dongting Lake Water Conservancy Center in Hunan Province and more than 30 years of water conservancy experience, is supervising the battle near the embankment. He told The Chinese Philanthropist that the height of the embankment is basically enough for the time being, and there is no need to increase the height. The problem is that the last time the embankment was repaired was in 1996, and it has not been well maintained for more than 20 years, so it is not very resilient to disasters. Since the evening of July 5, a team has stepped up operations here to quickly clear obstacles.
"The first task is to remove the weeds that have accumulated on the embankment so that it can be easily investigated. The second is to wrap the embankment along the water surface with colored striped cloth, which is also a common measure in flood control projects. The third is to increase the intensity of risk investigation, at present, there are not many dangers here in the embankment, but it is necessary to prepare and deal with it as soon as possible. It's important to hold this place. Chen Wenping said.
Long-term attention and support is required
Dongting Lake is huge, and with the addition of the river, it can reach 22 billion cubic meters of water every day. Once the water level of the whole lake rises, it is difficult to complete the work of draining water in a short period of time, as is the case in some areas. Coupled with the heavy rainfall that is still likely to be faced in July and August, Tuan Chau Yuan is likely to continue to be flooded for the next two months.
At present, nearly 5,800 people in Tuanzhou Township have basically been moved out of the dangerous area. Some of them stayed in the safe area at the southeast corner of Tuan Chau Yuan, which is where the township government and other public buildings are located, and the ground is higher; The other part was moved to the outside of the mound.
"Chinese Philanthropist" learned that temporary resettlement sites for disaster victims have been set up in Huarong County and neighboring towns. It is understood that after the breach, Hunan Province, cities and counties urgently allocated a total of 1,000 tents, 3,200 folding beds, 3,200 summer cool quilts, and 3,200 mattresses. The Office of the National Committee for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation and Relief, the Ministry of Emergency Management, together with the State Food and Material Reserves Administration, also urgently dispatched 5,000 additional household emergency kits to Hunan.
On the afternoon of July 6, Hunan Huarong County Rong Media Center issued the "Notice on Accepting Social Donations", announcing the contact information for receiving material and capital donations, among which the key materials needed are mineral water, bread, instant noodles, eight-treasure porridge, rice, oil, quilts, sanitizing supplies, etc.
Hao Nan mentioned that the continuous supply of materials in the current security zone may become a problem. At present, the only road that is clear is relatively narrow, and priority is given to vehicles transporting blocked sand and gravel, and the safety zone has effectively become an "island". In addition, the livelihood guarantee of the villagers who have been relocated within two months and the reconstruction of their homes after two months will be a severe test. According to the Interim Measures for Compensation for the Use of Flood Storage and Detention Areas, the government will compensate residents in the areas for water damage caused by agriculture, forestry and breeding, housing, livestock and durable consumer goods, but it will not cover all the costs of post-disaster reconstruction.
"People are now going to wander outside for two months, and when they go back to clear their homes, it's when they need money the most. But when the time comes, I'm afraid few people will think about it. He told reporters that he called on everyone to give more long-term attention and support to the disaster area.
In addition, in the face of hydrological disasters that many places across the country may face in the future, the whole society also needs to formulate plans and raise funds as soon as possible. At present, many rescue teams on the front line have been in many provinces to rescue floods, facing a state of resource exhaustion, lack of fuel, lack of ships, and lack of funds for dispatch operations. "Some rescue teams have just come from Pingjiang and have not rested for two days, and the lost boats have not been replaced. You can't live without a boat during the main flood season. Hao Nan said.
Authors: Wen Rujun, Gong Yijie
Image source: Visual China
Photo editor: Zhang Xu
Duty Editor: Qiu Yu