(Yicai Global) July 15 -- Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake which is fed by the Yangtze River, is in danger of spilling its banks and causing untold damage to the regions around it as Jiangxi province goes on red alert as heavy rainfall continues to pound the area.

Unprecedented downpours have affected over 6.42 million people in the eastern province. 645,000 people have been relocated, 583,900 hectares of crops have been damaged and there have been direct economic losses of CNY11.76 billion (USD1.7 billion).

Water levels at the lake reached 22.75 meters on July 12, above the historical high of 22.61 meters set in 1998. Flood waters were lapping the edges of the highway stretching past the lake between the cities of Jiujiang and Jingdezhen. Long distance buses are out of service and most regions are only accessible by boat.

Some 71,012 people in the county out of a population of 1.6 million has been relocated as of July 11, according to preliminary statistics.

However, as the old Chinese saying goes, ‘Help comes from all directions when one is in trouble.’ The military, firefighters and other professional rescue teams have all been sent in from in and around the province to help out.

The People’s Liberation Army has dispatched 2,300 officers and soldiers to Jiujiang city and 1,500 soldiers to Poyang county. The Fujian Fire Rescue Corps sent a rescue team of 260 people with 47 fire engines and 26 boats.

"We have been here since July 8 and haven’t gone home," said a group of exhausted firefighters from the Poyang county fire brigade.

Local Efforts

Many places, such as Jiangzhou town in Jiujiang city, have called out for their young folk working in other places to come back to make up for the acute shortage in manpower and resources. Nearly 3,000 people have returned to their hometowns so far.

“This is the hardest hit area,” said a local man using the pseudonym Gu Feng who left his work in Hangzhou in neighboring Zhejiang province to return home to help. The dikes at his hometown in Shuanggang town, Poyang country burst on July 12. The flood waters reached as high as the second story of some homes. More than one hundred houses remain underwater.

"I was carrying sandbags," he told Yicai Global, showing a video of forklifts strengthening the dam.

“I have never seen such a large flood,” another local resident told Yicai Global, despite regular flooding in the area since historical times. “The supply of materials is currently okay. We have suffered economic losses, but fortunately no casualties," he added.

"Some villages in the vicinity were submerged, but because my house is higher up, it has not yet been affected," another local told Yicai Global. However, she was concerned that the dam close to her home could collapse.

Another lady using the alias Duan Shui, who works in Shenzhen, found out that her mother-in-law, who lives alone near Poyang Lake, was taken to a centralized resettlement site set up by the government before the dike went down.

The weather in the Poyang Lake area is forecast to clear in the short term. This will cause the lake’s water level to gradually drop, the Jiangxi Provincial Water Resources Department said.

Editor: Kim Taylor