The Yellow River in China, often called "China's Sorrow," flooded in 1931 and killed 3.7 million people, the most deaths due to a flood ever recorded in history. Although the Chinese government has built numerous dams, China still suffers many deaths when major rivers flood. As recently as 1996, a flood of the Yangtze River killed two thousand people.
In Western countries where more resources can be invested in prediction and preparation, death tolls are normally much lower. During a massive 1995 flood in the Netherlands, for example, thirty people drowned but two hundred thousand were evacuated. Diane Raines Ward, in her book Water Wars, describes the high-tech flood management techniques employed by the Dutch during that flood:
Holland was as ready as it could be. Military planes with infrared cameras flew low to identify trouble spots [in the dikes.] Dutch soldiers worked alongside civilian volunteers to reinforce embankments with sand.....
This is a free excerpt of 150 words. This section contains 3,148 words. This
article contains 22,173 words (approx. 74 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Floods Access Pass.
