China’s Ministry of Water Resources activated a level-four flood-defence emergency response for Sichuan at 18:00 on Wednesday, extending inland a flood operation that began on the coast with Typhoon Hongxia. The notice, published on the ministry’s own site and so far only in Chinese, forecasts heavy to torrential rain across central and south-eastern Sichuan from 30 July to 3 August.
The specific warning is about tributaries rather than the Yangtze mainstem. The ministry names the Qingyi and the Dadu — both feeding the Min — and the Fu, which joins the Jialing, as rivers that may produce what China’s hydrological system calls numbered floods: a formal designation triggered when a river passes a defined warning discharge, which starts a sequence of reservoir and evacuation measures. The upper Yangtze mainstem and the Min, Tuo and Jialing are all expected to rise.
Level four is the lowest rung of China’s four-tier emergency ladder, and its activation for a province that was not previously in the operation is the signal worth noting: the flood risk has moved from the coastal provinces where the typhoon made landfall to the mountainous upper Yangtze basin, where the rivers respond quickly and the reservoir system above Three Gorges has to absorb what arrives.