In August 1931, China experienced heavy rains and the Yangtze River flooded again. This created one of the deadliest natural disasters in known history. The number of people killed in the 1931 China floods were difficult to determine with official estimates ranging from 140,000 to 3 million people. The devastation of the 1931 flood was made worse by the social turbulence occurring concurrently as the nation was enduring a civil war at that time. This meant that civil authorities were preoccupied with other priorities. Consequently, civil authorities failed to take essential measures to significantly reduce overflow such as gathering sediment along the populated areas of the river.