186 people dead in heavy rains

Soldiers carry sandbags to reinforce a dam in Shencun Township in Xuancheng city, East China's Anhui province, July 3, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Hubei, Anhui worst hit

In central Hubei Province, torrential rain has left 34 people dead and 11 others missing, between Thursday and Sunday. In Anhui Province, seven people have died and another four went missing from June 27 to July 3, according to local authorities.

More than 17 million people have been affected by the rain in the two provinces, with 974,000 people relocated. The rain also destroyed over 400,000 rooms and affected 1.4 million hectares of crops.

Relief efforts

The National Commission for Disaster Reduction and the Ministry of Civil Affairs has launched a level-IV emergency response in the Hubei and Anhui provinces.

Authorities sent a work team and 3,000 tents to help relief work in Hubei, while in Anhui, authorities allocated 3,000 tents and 3,000 folding beds to the province, in addition to 5,000 quilts.

Anhui authorities have organized 40,000 officials and people to patrol dykes in the province, dealing with 374 dangerous situations. Hubei authorities also have sent thousands of officials and police to scrutinize the dykes.

When the first flood flow formed in the Yangtze River on Friday, the Three Gorges Dam captured the flow and mitigated flooding downstream, the flood control headquarters said.

The peak inflows reached 50,000 cubic meters per second on Friday, and the Three Gorges Dam, in Yichang, Hubei province, captured much of the water and cut outflow to 31,000 cubic meters per second.