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Residents of a village recently devastated by flooding tell of the rush to protect their loved ones after battling in vain to prevent the dam from breaking. By Shanghai Observer The dam at Dongting Lake lies just 200 meters from Chen Wei’s village home. As soon as he heard about the breach on July 5, he rushed over to find water sprouting from a small hole, like a mountain spring. Within a short while, it was a gushing stream. The first line of protective embankments lining the lake in Tuanzhou Township in central China’s Hunan province began experiencing a “piping effect” around 4 p.m. Piping is a type of erosion that occurs when the water levels inside and outside a dam vary significantly, which can lead to silt-loaded water from inside a lake or reservoir seeping through weak spots. If not dealt with quickly, it can cause a dam to burst. According to Zhang Xuanzhuang, a senior environmental safety engineer at China’s Anneng Construction Group, which is responsible for the
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