Huaihe River authorities drive flow of new safety measures

The river's total drainage area covers 270,000 square kilometers - about the size of New Zealand - and straddles all four provinces, with a total population of 171 million, about half that of the United States.

"The population density makes evacuation hard; sometimes the floods came so quickly that we didn't have time to move people out," said Yang Wenjiu, retired standing deputy head of the Funan government.

The 1991 floods are recognized as the most severe on the Huaihe since 1961, when the country started keeping records. They affected 54 million people in the four provinces, and resulted in a combined direct economic loss of 34 billion yuan, or 20 percent of the entire drainage area's annual GDP.

More than 1 million residents in the flood retention areas in Anhui were moved from their homes as a result of the flooding, according to the provincial government.

The authorities had two options: to allow the floods to expand to their full extent, or to open the sluice gates and let the Mengwa diversion area bear the brunt of the problem.

"If we didn't open the gates, the people along both the upper and lower reaches of the river would suffer the biggest losses," said Lu Haitao, director of the Wangjiaba sluice gates administration office.

Wu, the river commission expert, said, "The worst-hit places would be the lower reaches; the areas that were more economically developed and home to many important facilities, including railways, coal mines and factories."

Lu said, "The Mengwa people understood the situation, and the country was proud of them for that."

The gates were opened and the land was flooded. However, people in the Mengwa area did not receive compensation for their losses until 2003. As a result, the central government ordered that villagers should receive compensation as quickly as possible if the same decision had to be taken in the future.