Monstrous waves engulfed entire towns after typhoons burst the 62 iron dams in Henan Province on an August night in 1975. Two million people were trapped for weeks and disease and famine struck 11 million in the aftermath.
Flooding is part of life along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
Now environmentalists and hydrologists warn of an even deadlier disaster, a flood 40 times bigger than the one that struck in 1975. The catastrophe would occur if the 36 billion cubic yards of water to be contained by the infamous Three Gorges Dam now being built to regulate China's Yangtze River were ever unleashed. The Three Gorges Dam, destined to become the largest in the world, is China's answer to providing energy to its burgeoning population. The project was first proposed in the early 1930s, but bowed to political upheavals and financial setbacks. The Chinese government revived it in the late 1980s and began construction in December 1993.