Flooding in the upper reaches of China's Yangtze River forced authorities to evacuate more than 100 people on Tuesday and threatened a 1.200-year-old heritage site.
Emergency services, police and volunteers use sandbags to protect the 71-metre-tall Great Buddha in Leshan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in southwestern Sichuan province, as a muddy river rose over its toes for the first time since 1949, state television reported. CCTV, reported by Hina.
Sichuan, through which the Yangtze River flows, has been on maximum alert since Tuesday, facing the worst floods in decades.
The Yangtze River Water Resources Office, the government body that oversees the river, issued a red alert late Tuesday as water levels were expected to be five meters higher than normal in some parts.
The Three Gorges Project, a large hydroelectric plant designed in part to tame the Yangtze, expects water levels to rise 74 square meters per second, the most since it was built, the water resources ministry said.
The project limits the amount of water flowing downstream by storing it in a reservoir, which is ten meters above the recommended level for more than a month.
The hydroelectric plant had to release a larger amount of water on Tuesday in order to "reduce flood pressure", the ministry announced.
Authorities have tried to show that the cascades of giant dams and reservoirs built in the upper reaches of the Yangtze have defended the region from the worst floods this year, although critics say they may only be making matters worse.
Bonus video:
