The Great Chinese Floods of 1931

 

1931 Chinese Floods

In 1931, the greatest natural disaster ever recorded happened in China. Between the months of July and November, the worst floods the world has ever seen occurred.

At the time of the floods, China was attacking itself. A great civil war was raging between the Republic of China and the Communist Party over who would control the country. While China was fighting between itself, a new enemy arrived.  In September of that year, Japan attacked Manchuria in northern China.

The winter before the storms, China was hit with heavy snow. That spring, all that snow had to go somewhere. The snow melted into the rivers and the rivers soon began to rise. Also, for the past two years, China had been afflicted with a terrible drought. Finally, in July of that year, nine cyclones occurred where normally only two occurred each year.

Finally, in August the rivers overflowed. The three main rivers that overflowed were the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and the Huai River. They engulfed many towns and villages as they flooded the area.  When the Huai River overflowed, the floods sped towards Nanjing, the capitol of China at the time. As the rivers’ water level increased, the dikes of the Grand Canal were soon pressed. On the night of August 25^th, the dikes of the Grand Canal burst near Gaoyou burst and two hundred thousand people were killed in their sleep. The water continued rising until it entered Hankou. There the water hit its highest mark at 53 ft above normal water level.

The waters of the floods finally started to subside around November of that year. This terrible tragedy cost the lives of many people. Throughout a nine month period, four million people were lost either to drowning or to disease and starvation. The floods also damaged China dramatically and much money was lost during the disaster.

The Chinese government did almost nothing to fix the damage done during the floods. Because of the civil war and other problems, plans that had been suggested to fix the dams, were never put into action. For example, the Three Gorges Dam was suggested in the early 1950’s. It was never completed until 2009. After the floods, the only thing done for the people were a couple of small dams constructed along Yangtze River.