Three Gorges Dam on alert as heavy rain and floods kill 6 in China

Independent UK:
The Three Gorges Dam, China’s largest, is on high alert as floods triggered by torrential rains wreak havoc in the southwestern part of the country.

Record rainfall in Chongqing has caused flooding in a dozen districts and counties since Thursday, raising the water levels in 29 rivers, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Six people have died in the region which has received over 250mm of rain, according to the Chongqing Hydrological Monitoring Station.

An aerial drone showed a township submerged in muddy waters.

Dianjiang county in Chongqing received 269.2mm of rain on Thursday, the highest in a single day ever. more

27 Comments on Three Gorges Dam on alert as heavy rain and floods kill 6 in China

  1. It would have been good if the source article had explained just what raising

    …the flood emergency response to level 3 in the four-tier response system in which level 1 is the most severe

    means in terms of actual risks.

    If it means that flooding will incrementally continue to increase, that’s easiest to prepare for, painful though it may be.

    If it means that it might be necessary to release water from the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam, that’s much worse. Increase in flood water will be abrupt and high volume. Very likely highly destructive. I’m assuming this is what the warning level increase means.

    Worst case, of course, is dam failure. That would kill millions of people (I remember reading about this scenario a few years ago). Some would die immediately in the flooding, and some would die later of starvation as major agricultural tracts would vanish. The Chinese economy, infrastructure, and govt (CCP) could very easily fail if this were to happen, and it would take many years to recover.

    I have no sympathy for the govt in general and the CCP in particular. But I pray for the wellbeing of ordinary Chinese people downstream.

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  2. I recall reading about this dam as it was being built. There were many criticisms about the size, flood capacity, engineering and construction quality came out but they kept building it.

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  3. They removed tons of families whose homes had been there for a thousand years to build that. Even the former Chinese engineers were saying the structure was shady. Something about inferior products, missing pieces, etc. ugh.

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  4. The chinks have perfected SNAFU and FUBAR down to a T as well as BOHICA. They are masters at deception and deceptive practices in every area of their communist culture. And unfortunately, our own deep state is a close second. They both need to be destroyed.

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  5. geoff – the old story about NFW was that the Norfolk & Western railroad bought the Western Affiliated Yard for overnight shipments. Their slogan was:
    “When you absolutely have to get it there the next day there’s Norfolk & Way”

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  6. @RadioMattM
    I deal with them all the time as part of my job and the corp I work for moving all manufacturing to CCP, Taiwan and now India and Vietnam.
    They all do what their leaders tell them because they are always afraid for their lives. It’s in their culture.

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  7. That dam is not going to survive long term. It just isn’t. I’ve seen photos and it has moved already.

    Here’s the saddest part, this is what passes for sound engineering here in the United States now as well. All of the critical professions have been politicized and are no longer trustworthy.

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  8. The Three Gorges dam will fail. Chinese engineers thought the weight of the dam would be enough to make it secure, so the dam sits on clay rather than down to bedrock. The dam shifted a few millimeters a couple years ago during heavy rains and flooding. When (not if) the dam breaks, it will probably be the end of China’s current form of government.

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  9. JDHasty, you know as well as I do that these are the same fools who want to breach all the dams on the lower snake River in order to free the salmon. And destroy agriculture in SE Wash. state as well as Idaho. The left is nothing but a bunch of dam fools. And about as smart as the fish that swam into a concrete wall and said dam.

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  10. The cloud seeding angle is starting to get my attention. Something is different from the last 40 years. I usually need to water my lawn by this time in July after a 3-4 week span of hot & dry and here I am getting regular rain like it’s still Spring.

    Mind you, I love the rain, plus it’s really good for the pest biz, but this is different.

    I’m getting rain as I type this. iPhone weather app said it would stop 3 hours ago. It has been wrong one way or another most of the time lately.

    I don’t run my life by it. I just work and get rained off the job if it comes to that. So I’m good.

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  11. Imagine what a B-2 bomber with bunker busters could do to the Three Gorges Dam. Drop them into the water adjacent to the dam on the lake side and let the party begin.

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  12. @ geoff the aardvark MONDAY, 14 JULY 2025, 12:27 AT 12:27 PM

    I’ve been posting for over a decade that the progressive/Marxist/Satanist movement exists to increase innocent human suffering, misery and death. That is what most of what has been going on politically and all of what motivates Democrat voters and supporters.

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  13. That Three Gorges Dam absolutely will fail before much longer. The mechanism of failure will be buoyancy combined with foundation failure. Educate yourself about glacial lake Missoula and the repeated failures of the ice dam and the mechanism of failure there and you will understand why.

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  14. FWIW, the Three Gorges Dam impounds a fraction of the water that the glacial lake Missoula contained, but it will still absolutely devastate everything downstream,

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  15. Meh.

    ALERT me when the title reads, “3 Gorges Dam Bursts and Washes Away 60 Million Commies, Irresponsible Polluters & Intellectual Property Thieves.”

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