Shanghai Daily news

All 13 sluice gates of a reservoir in Anhui Province were opened at 11am today to divert floodwaters from the Huaihe River.

Floodwaters are running down from the Wangjiaba Reservoir to the Mengwa Flood Diversion Area of Fuyang City in the province at a speed of 325 cubic meters per second, Xinhua news agency said.

The Mengwa Flood Diversion Area stores the Huaihe River floodwater to guarantee the safety of major cities and industrial centers along the middle and lower reaches of the river.

About 150,000 people live in the area, comprising Fuyang's Funan County and neighboring Yinshang County.

Opening the sluice gates exposes cropland to potential floods. Farmers along the river have been warned that their cropland may be inundated in order to prevent the flood-prone Huaihe River from bursting its banks.

However, villagers in the Mengwa area told Xinhua that they were not worried because the central government promised to compensate them for any losses.

"Water flows here slowly, not all of a sudden, so we have enough time to harvest more crops," a woman villager said.

Each family in the area has stored enough food and water, another villager told Xinhua.

The warning level of the Wangjiaba Reservoir is 29.30 meters. As of 8am today, the water level had reached 29.22 meters, Xinhua said.

Torrential rainstorms began lashing the Huaihe River valley on June 28. Fuyang reported up to 56 centimeters of rain in some areas between Saturday and yesterday, according to the government's Website.

More than 1,600 villages have been flooded and about 7,000 people need to be evacuated in Fuyang.

Fuyang's government has drafted 20 measures to deal with the floods. The measures deal with traffic, epidemic prevention, food supply, power use, and communications for the duration of the floods.

Widespread flooding across several provinces has killed 101 people, according to a Ministry of Civil Affair spokesman yesterday.

Warning of a new tropical storm Man-Yi was issued by the central meteorologists yesterday. It formed east of the Philippines yesterday. Such storms can grow in strength and hit China's southern coastal provinces.