Southern Weekly, founded in 1984, is also part of the Nanfang Media Group and was before Xi’s era one of China’s most liberal and outspoken media outlets, known for publishing investigations exposing government wrongdoing and annual editorials advocating for constitutional reform despite censorship and government pressure.
Report Summary
(by “Li Laoshi Bushì Ni Laoshi @whyyoutouzhele”)Built in 1958, Liulan Reservoir begin its safety upgrades in 2009, followed by the main works being put into service in 2010. However, several staff members revealed that the project still had not passed final completion acceptance since then, and some monitoring facilities had not undergone the required separate acceptance inspections.
Ironically, the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau had publicized the reservoir in 2025 as a success story, saying it had changed from a “problem reservoir” into a “model project” with better flood protection.
This report, however, documented some long-standing problems at the reservoir, including cracks along the dam crest, corrosion on the floodgates and their guide slots, failed automated monitoring systems, and staff shortages.
As floodwaters rose, staff had to read water levels manually and pass on information by mobile phone, WeChat and email. Some township governments did not receive flood-release notices promptly because their email inboxes were full.
In the early hours of July 6, when preparing to increase flood releases, the staff encountered problems with all five gates: motor failures, gates slipping back down and gates that could not be fully opened.
The reservoir’s fuse plug designed to give way first during extreme floods and release water through an emergency spillway did not serve its purpose. It remained intact, however, while a breach opened in the main dam.
The reservoir chief said he made 11 consecutive calls to the mayor of Hengzhou, who also served as commander of the city’s flood-control headquarters, after danger became apparent at the dam. None of the calls was answered.
The report also noted that, despite his firsthand understanding of conditions at the reservoir, the station chief had no authority to fully open the gates without approval.
This bureaucratic constraint trapped the staff in a high-stakes dilemma. Releasing water too earlier could have flooded communities downstream, while holding it back could have increased the risk of a dam breach.
With no clear order from above, front-line workers at the reservoir could only wait for a decision while knowing they might still be held responsible for what happened.
Looking back, the station chief said, “I should have opened the gates first and reported it to my superiors afterward.”
According to the most recent official update available at the time, issued six days earlier, flooding from the breach at Liulan Reservoir had killed 26 people and left seven missing.
By Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly, and Su Luojie, contributing writer
He kept thinking back to the night before the breach at Liulan Reservoir, examining every aspect in turn: the timing of flood releases, the condition of the gates, coordination among authorities, and the construction quality of the main dam and fuse plug.
(On July 9, 2026, Xie Zhijie speaks on the phone beside the breached Liulan Reservoir. Behind him, the reservoir bed is exposed. Photo: Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly.)
A week after the breach, rain was still falling intermittently. Liulan Reservoir had drained almost completely, exposing broad stretches of yellow mud. Xie Zhijie, the 37-year-old head of the reservoir service station, stood silently before the breach in the dam.
“Of course I feel guilty. People keep asking why we didn’t lower the reservoir level earlier and start releasing water sooner. They’re blaming the reservoir for being useless,” Xie told Southern Weekly. Since the reservoir dam breached on July 6, 2026, causing severe flooding, he has kept thinking back to the night before, examining every aspect in turn: when water should have been released, the condition of the gates, coordination among the authorities, and the construction quality of the main dam and fuse plug.
Liulan Reservoir, also known as Liulan Reservoir under an alternative Chinese spelling, lies in a valley on the upper reaches of the Zhenlong River, a tributary of the Yujiang River. It is in Liulan Village, Xiaoyi Town, Hengzhou, a county-level city administered by Nanning in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Built chiefly for irrigation, the reservoir also serves flood-control and power-generation purposes.
As the largest medium-sized reservoir in Hengzhou, the reservoir was first built in 1958. It subsequently underwent dam-safety rehabilitation and upgrades to its irrigation district. In 2025, the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau said it had been transformed from a “problem reservoir” into a “model project.”
At Nanning’s third flood-control and disaster-relief news conference, officials reported that as of 11 a.m. on July 9, heavy-rain disasters across Guangxi had left 39 people dead and nine missing. Among them, the breach at Liulan Reservoir accounted for 26 deaths and seven missing people. All 54,500 residents identified as being at risk in Hengzhou had been evacuated and accommodated.
Before the rains that caused the flooding, Hengzhou had been in the grip of a severe drought. The reservoir staff told Southern Weekly that while the reservoir was built for both irrigation and flood control, irrigation had long played the bigger role because of the local climate.
July marked Xie’s third month as head of Liulan Reservoir service station. He became deputy head there in 2023, after serving as head of Yunbiao Reservoir. Earlier, he had worked as a village-based official and deputy head of the Luancheng Electric Irrigation Management Station.
At around 10 p.m. on July 8, the Southern Weekly reporter reached Dutian Village in Xiaoyi Town after a difficult journey and continued on foot to Liulan Reservoir, where he met Xie, who was on duty there. Flooding had left more than a kilometer of road between the village and the reservoir covered in mud that rose above the ankles. As of publication, the reservoir’s service station remained difficult to reach by vehicle.
“Small floods can be managed by people, but when major floods strike, the water takes over,” said an expert with years of experience in flood control and disaster reduction. He said many small and medium-sized dams in central and western China had defects that only became apparent during extreme rainstorms. When floods exceed design standards, effective risk management depends primarily on strengthened risk identification. “When disaster becomes unavoidable, there is still much to consider about how to limit losses and reduce the damage as far as possible,” the expert said.
(Aerial view of the breach at Liulan Reservoir. Photo by Zhao Ming, Southern Weekly.)
From Controlled Releases to Opening All the Gates
On Sunday, July 5, shortly after 11 a.m., Xie returned from downtown Hengzhou, more than 30 kilometers away, to take his shift at the reservoir service station. Rain had fallen intermittently in Xiaoyi Town since mid-June, and the volume of water stored in the reservoir had continued to rise.
At 6:20 a.m., the Hengzhou meteorological office issued a weather-hazard warning. Between 2 a.m. and the time of the warning, Hengzhou had received 30–50 millimeters of heavy rain, with thunderstorms and localized winds of Force 6–8. The office warned of a high risk of flash floods and geological hazards.
At about 8:33 a.m., Xiaoyi Town’s Party and Government Office forwarded the orange rainstorm warning to a WeChat group for units directly under the town government. No one responded.
Reservoir staff were reading the water level manually and found it rising rapidly, already past 105.43 meters. The reservoir’s flood-season water-level limit was 108.10 meters, the maximum level at which water may normally be stored during flood season. Once that limit is reached or exceeded, releases must follow the reservoir’s operating rules to leave room for subsequent floodwater.
Xie said that although the water level was rising, it remained below the flood-season limit. Until around 3 p.m., the staff on duty had noticed no obvious irregularities. But the rain became heavier that afternoon.
At 3:28 p.m., Xie instructed station staff to prepare for flood-control releases. About half an hour later, he called all staff back to the reservoir to stand by.
By 4 p.m., the water level was rising rapidly and approaching the flood limit water level.
At 5:50 p.m., the service station issued a warning that it would open the gates for flood-control releases at 10 p.m. The notice was emailed to the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau and the governments of Yunbiao, Maling and Xiaoyi towns. Staff also phoned the town governments to help residents prepare for flooding.
“When I sent the notice, I phoned the township governments downstream,” recalled the staff member responsible. “Two said they could not receive the email because their inboxes were full. I immediately added contacts at the Xiaoyi and Yunbiao town governments on WeChat and sent the notice that way.”
At 6:42 p.m., Xie sent Lei Jiasheng, the Party secretary of Xiaoyi Town, a WeChat message about the flood-release warning and riverside villages. He emphasized the extremely heavy rainfall in Zhenlong Township, upstream from the reservoir.
At 7:20 p.m., the reservoir water level reached 107.51 meters. Seven minutes later, Xie received a message from the deputy head of the disaster-prevention section of the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau: the hydrological center had upgraded its alert to yellow, warning that water levels on the Zhenlong River in Zhenlong Township could rise to around two meters above the warning threshold within the next two to six hours.
“As soon as I saw that, I knew something was wrong,” Xie said. “We had to start releasing water earlier.” The reservoir station reported the situation to the water resources bureau. After receiving approval, it issued a new warning, announcing that the flood-regulation operations would be moved forward from 10 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and the agencies and local governments previously notified were informed of the change.
At 8:25 p.m., Liulan Reservoir activated a Level III emergency response. Xie recalled that experts had assessed the maximum safe flow in the downstream river channel at 220 cubic meters per second under the station’s emergency plan. “So I began releases at 50 to 200 cubic meters per second,” he said. “That was within the safe flow limit.”
Reservoir staff then sounded a hand-operated warning siren to alert villagers downstream that the floodgates were about to be opened.
The spillway had five roller-shutter-style gates, each 2.9 meters high. Under the operating procedure, they were opened one after another rather than simultaneously: the middle gate first, followed by the gates on either side.
According to the reservoir’s work log, Gate No. 3 was raised by 0.5 meters at around 8:40 p.m., beginning the controlled release. Five minutes later, Gate No. 2 was raised by 0.5 meters. Gates 4, 5 and 1 were opened in sequence, with the openings gradually increased.
By 10:10 p.m., the reservoir’s water level had reached 109.42 meters, above the tops of the floodgates, and showed no sign of stopping.
At 12:05 a.m. on July 6, Lei tagged Xie in the town’s flood-control WeChat group. “Please assess what is likely to happen,” Lei wrote. “Which village committees and which areas are affected, and what measures need to be taken?”
Following the established procedures, Xie laid out two evacuation scenarios. If the reservoir could discharge a check flood normally, one community and 29 village groups across Xiaoyi and Yunbiao towns would need to be evacuated and accommodated. If the dam breached and released a flood, the affected area would extend to one community and 60 village groups in the two towns.
At 2:22 a.m., Lei added Xie to a WeChat group used by Xiaoyi’s village Party secretaries and village committee directors. About an hour later, Xie wrote in the group that the Zhenlong hydrological station was no longer updating its water-level and flow data, making an accurate forecast impossible.
At 5:07 a.m., the reservoir sent surrounding town governments a warning that all floodgates would be fully opened. Staff cordoned off both ends of the road across the dam to keep people and vehicles away from the reservoir. Around the same time, workers in the spillway control room felt pronounced vibrations.
At 5:45 a.m., the water level reached 111.61 meters. Fifteen minutes later, the reservoir notified relevant agencies and town governments that a Level II emergency response for flood control would begin at 7 a.m. on July 6.
At around 5:50 a.m., Xie tried to have all five gates fully opened, but problems with the gates became apparent. He later told Southern Weekly that by 6 a.m., when all five were supposed to be fully open for flood releases, they still could not be opened completely.
At 6:48 a.m., the water level reached 112.16 meters, five centimeters above the design flood level. The design flood level is the maximum level expected at the dam after a flood of the design magnitude has been regulated; it is higher than the flood limit level. In other words, the reservoir had reached what the report described as the “safe limit” for normal operation.
At 8:15 a.m., the reservoir activated a Level I emergency response. The staff member responsible for notifying outside agencies said that by the time she finished contacting the last village committee, her phone had lost its signal.
“What I worried about most was losing power and communications,” Xie said. “A lot of our official notices are sent out by computer.” The power went out at around 8 a.m., making it increasingly difficult for reservoir staff to send information to people outside.
At 8:55 a.m., 40 minutes after the Level I response was activated, Lei posted three messages in rapid succession to the liaison group. One read: “Find every possible way to tell all residents in the Liulan Village area to evacuate immediately to the hills [higher ground upstream of Liulan Reservoir]!!!”
At around 9:20 a.m. on July 6, reservoir staff estimated that the water level had reached 116.26 meters, 8.16 meters above the flood-season limit and the highest level since the reservoir was built.
According to the reservoir’s log for that day, a breach about 30 meters long appeared on the eastern side of the dam at around 9 a.m. By about 10:30 a.m., a breach about 110 meters long had opened in the middle of the dam.
(Roads around Liulan Reservoir were badly damaged after the flood. Xie Zhijie makes his way along one of them on an electric bicycle. Photo by Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly.)
The Timing of Flood Releases and the Gates That Failed to Open Fully
“There wasn’t much rain on the morning of the fifth. It only got heavy in the afternoon,” Xie said. During the day, he had thought the reservoir could withstand it. “Later, the rainfall figures looked wrong. Even the meteorological authorities might not have expected such heavy rain in Zhenlong.” Until then, he said, no one had stressed to him how intense the rain might become.
A month before the flooding, Hengzhou was experiencing a severe drought during the summer planting season. Water levels at Liulan Reservoir remained low until the rainy season began on June 13. Xie said the level at 8 a.m. on June 12 was 93.72 meters, representing storage of just 13.04 million cubic meters. “Some upstream villages had already begun taking drought-relief measures,” he said.
The Hengzhou Municipal Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau’s website describes the city as an important agricultural producer, known as “China’s home of jasmine” and a leading production area for fresh sweet corn. Jasmine, sweet corn and papaya are among its main agricultural products.
A 2012 local meteorological disaster-prevention plan stated that Hengzhou receives an annual average of around 1,415 millimeters of rainfall but suffers droughts of varying severity every year, especially droughts extending from winter into spring. Yunbiao and Xiaoyi towns were designated high-risk drought areas. They were also among the areas hardest hit by this flood.
Liulan Reservoir has an active storage capacity of 66 million cubic meters. By the morning of July 5, it was holding about 50 million cubic meters of water. There was still substantial room left in the reservoir, and the water remained below the flood limit level.
Xie said the reservoir held enough water to irrigate downstream grain crops through the second half of the year. “If we released it all at once, what would we do if there was no more rain?” he asked.
There was another practical reason they had not released water earlier, Xie explained. The station would begin flood-control releases only when forecasts showed the water level was likely to rise above its flood limit. “The reservoir could still take more water,” he said. “The water hadn’t reached the level where we needed to start releasing it.”
According to the notice, all five floodgates at Liulan Reservoir were scheduled to be fully opened at 6 a.m. on July 6.
“But we never actually managed to get all the gates fully open, because they malfunctioned,” Xie said. At around 4 a.m. that day, the motor on Gate No. 5 burned out. Staff repaired it, but the gate later began sliding back down. After 5:10 a.m., Gate No. 3 also malfunctioned and slid shut on its own.
At around 5:50 a.m., as Xie was trying to have all the gates fully opened, Gate No. 5 malfunctioned again. “We would raise it a little and it would slide down again, over and over,” Xie said. “The highest we could get it was about two meters. The control room was shaking badly. It was very dangerous.” At 6:18 a.m., Xie told everyone in the control room to evacuate.
Today, all five gates at the reservoir’s spillway have been torn away by the floodwaters. The lifting cables on some of them have snapped.
Xie Qi, a member of the Urban Water Conservancy Specialized Committee of the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society, said the gates’ failure to open fully affected the spillway’s discharge volume and flow rate.
Hao Nan, head of Zhuoming Disaster Information Service, said, however, that even fully opening the gates would not have stopped the reservoir from overtopping. “Even at maximum discharge, water could not have been released nearly as fast as floodwater was pouring into the reservoir from upstream.”
After the disaster, some questioned why the floodgates had not been fully opened sooner. They wondered whether water had been held back to protect fish raised by farmers who had contracts to farm the reservoir. Xie responded: “As operators, we are the ones who decide when and how to release water for irrigation,” he said. “The fish farmers have no say in that.”
“At first, we did not dare release too much water,” Xie added. “We had notified people of a discharge of 50–200 cubic meters per second. If it had exceeded the downstream channel’s safe capacity of 220 cubic meters per second before people downstream were evacuated, they would have been flooded.”
Xie said another reason the reservoir did not fully open its gates in the early hours was that he had not received instructions from higher authorities to do so. Looking back, he said, “I should have opened the gates first and reported upward afterward.”
“With the warning and evacuation mechanisms still inadequate, fully opening the gates in the middle of the night could very well have caused casualties,” the expert told Southern Weekly. “If that happened, the reservoir’s release would have been blamed.” The expert said that without a clear order from the flood-control command, the reservoir chief could not simply proceed with a full-scale release on his own.The expert said the decision was extremely difficult. The downstream river channel could not have accommodated the discharge from all five gates being fully opened. “Without releases, the risk of a dam breach would rise. But with releases, flooding along the downstream riverbanks would be inevitable,” the expert said.
Xie said he did not know why the gates suddenly malfunctioned. Since he started working at Liulan Reservoir in 2023, staff had used them every year but never opened them fully. “We did not raise them very high, usually just a few dozen centimeters to about two meters. We knew they could be raised and lowered and that they worked.”
The Liulan Reservoir’s 2026 Flood-Season Operation Plan shows that the spillway originally had no gates. As part of a safety rehabilitation project in 2010, the spillway was rebuilt to improve its ability to release floodwater, and five gates were installed on top of the weir.
Since then, the five gates have remained in use. A 2020 safety assessment found that the main components of the gates at the spillway, main dam and Liuli water-conveyance tunnel met standards for strength, rigidity and stability. The hoists and gates also met operating requirements. However, the bulkhead gates and their slots were badly rusted, securing devices were damaged, and the lifting lugs on the service gates were severely corroded. Overall, the metal structures received a Grade B safety rating and were considered safe to operate.
Xie said routine gate maintenance involved greasing the steel cables. A notice published by Nanning’s government service authorities in 2024 referred to a maintenance project that included replacing the service gates, bulkhead gates and two sets of gate rods.
A person who had worked on the spillway gate design at the Nanning Institute of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Design told Southern Weekly that the reservoir used open-top gates. A hoist drove pulleys connected to lifting lugs on the gate leaves, allowing the gates to be raised and lowered.
“There was nothing wrong with the gate design,” he said. “The problem may have been that, by the time they tried to raise the gates, the water had already risen over the top. The water pressure may have become so great that the gates could not be lifted effectively.”
(The five gates at Liulan Reservoir’s spillway. Photo by Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly.)
“We Just Couldn’t Keep Track Anymore. The Water Was Moving Too Fast”
Construction of Liulan Reservoir began in August 1958 and was largely completed in 1960. By 2026, the reservoir was about 66 years old. Many villagers volunteered to help build it without pay, using sand and stone as construction materials. One reservoir staff member said her grandfather had been among those who volunteered to work on the project.
Several local residents told Southern Weekly that reservoirs around Hengzhou were all held back by embankment dams built from earth and rock. Experts interviewed for the report likewise said that most small and medium-sized reservoirs built in the past used this type of dam.
According to a preliminary design report for the reservoir’s safety rehabilitation project, prepared by the above-mentioned water and hydropower design institute on August 11, 2008, the main dam had never undergone reinforcement from the time it was built through 2009.
According to information published on the China Government Procurement Network, the 2009 rehabilitation project was divided into two contract packages. The project had an estimated total investment of RMB 73.62 million, including RMB 53.9633 million for construction works.
Package I included reinforcement of the main dam, work on the emergency spillway, water-release facilities at the main dam and Liuli, safety-monitoring equipment for the main dam, an emergency access road for flood response, and a management building. Package II covered spillway reinforcement and reconstruction of the main water-conveyance canal that crosses the spillway.
The dam-safety rehabilitation project began in October 2009. Its principal works passed an acceptance inspection permitting them to be put into use in December 2010.
However, several reservoir staff members told Southern Weekly that the 2009 rehabilitation project had still not passed final acceptance. “It cannot pass final acceptance because the quality is not up to standard,” one staff member said.
Under China’s rules governing acceptance of water-conservancy construction projects, acceptance by the project owner of completed work only certifies that a specific phase of construction is done—it cannot replace the final acceptance of the project as a whole. Final acceptance is the last required step before the project is formally handed over for operation; projects that have not undergone it, or have failed it, may not be handed over for use or proceed to subsequent work under the cited rules. A staff member at Liulan Reservoir said: “Without final acceptance, many of the facilities cannot be used to the strength or standards they were designed for.”
The reservoir’s 2020 dam-safety appraisal report also noted that monitoring facilities installed during the 2009–2010 rehabilitation had still not undergone the required separate acceptance inspection, which the report said was detrimental to dam safety and management.
Asked whether the 2009 rehabilitation project had passed final acceptance, the design institute source said: “We were the design unit,” he said. “We don’t know what happened later with construction acceptance.” The Southern Weekly reporter made several attempts to reach the director of the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau, but the calls did not connect.
The reservoir’s 2026 Flood-Season Operation Plan reported that the structures used to retain, convey and discharge water met standards for structural, seepage and seismic safety. It gave the structural safety of the main dam, spillway and water-conveyance facilities a Grade A rating and deemed them fit for safe operation.
In information published in 2025, the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau said the reservoir had previously suffered from aging facilities, inadequate management, safety risks and functional shortcomings. The bureau said efforts to standardize water-project management had substantially improved flood protection and helped boost agricultural production and farmers’ incomes, transforming the reservoir from a “problem reservoir” into a “model project.”
But a 2020 dam-safety appraisal report issued by the Nanning Water Resources Bureau had recorded cracks on the dam crest, first found on November 3, 2014. It identified possible causes as uneven settlement of fill in the dam, vehicle traffic, or a lack of expansion joints in the concrete surface on the crest.
A document obtained by Southern Weekly showed that in 2021 the service station reported cracks in the dam railings and drainage channels on the outer slope to the Hengzhou Municipal Water Resources Bureau. It spent RMB 1,834 hiring a company to repair the cracks.
Minutes of an April 7, 2026, service-station meeting stated that Guangxi regional authorities had raised several issues requiring corrective action at Liulan Reservoir. One was cracking in the pavement on the dam crest, which posed a safety risk.
According to the meeting minutes, with no funding available for the repairs, the service station discussed covering the cost of asphalt and sand up front to fill the cracks.
When the Southern Weekly reporter visited the reservoir in July, he saw clearly visible cracks on the dam. Winding lines of asphalt patches ran along the crest. Two senior staff members said the cracks had already been there before the dam breached.
“Even without any construction flaws, once the water reached this level and overtopped the dam, a breach would have been almost inevitable. No reservoir could withstand conditions like that,” Xie said, describing the staggering torrents that day. The station roughly estimated that between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on July 6, inflow to Liulan Reservoir peaked at 5,000–6,000 cubic meters per second. “After that, we just couldn’t keep track anymore. The water was moving too fast. It was spilling over the crest of the dam,” Xie said.
Hao Nan agreed that the disaster simply caught the infrastructure unprepared. “My basic assessment is that the extreme rainfall far exceeded what this reservoir was designed to handle,” he said. Many reservoirs were designed and built to protective standards that have become increasingly difficult to meet amid rising climate risks, he added. Major physical upgrades to reservoirs would require considerable time, money and labor.
(Cracks along the crest of Liulan Reservoir, recorded in April 2026. Photo by Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly.)
(On the morning of July 6, 2026, Liulan Reservoir staff stood by near the water, ready to rescue people if needed. Photo provided by an interviewee.)
The Fuse Plug Did Not Give Way
Before making landfall, Typhoon Maysak moved over the warm waters of the Beibu Gulf (Gulf of Tonkin). After its airflows entered Guangxi, they slowed and were lifted by the terrain around the Zhenlong Mountains. This produced a “training effect,” in which successive rain systems pass over the same area, bringing exceptionally heavy accumulated rainfall to the mountains.
Hao said floodwater struck with greater force in the upstream mountains and foothills, while inundation was the main problem in the hilly basin around Yunbiao Town downstream.
The terrain around the Zhenlong Mountains played a major role in the disaster. The range’s highest peak, Dasheng Mountain, rises to 1,170 meters, while Xiaosheng Mountain reaches 928 meters. The maximum elevation difference between the main peak and valleys within the mountains is about 900 meters. Between the mountains and the plain below, the vertical difference exceeds 1,080 meters.
That steep terrain allows runoff to converge quickly down the slopes, while steep stream gradients send water rapidly through the valleys. During intense short bursts of rain, flash floods can form quickly and rush down the mountain valleys toward reservoirs near the valley outlets, including Liulan, Gandao and Yunbiao.
Yunbiao Reservoir lies about 6.2 kilometers from Liulan Reservoir, on the Yunbiao River, a tributary of the Zhenlong River. It is another mid-sized reservoir built in 1958. At around 10 a.m. on July 6, it also developed two breaches.
During an on-site visit, the Southern Weekly reporter found severe damage to the main dam at Yunbiao Reservoir, with breaches at multiple locations.
Xie wondered whether things might have turned out differently if the reservoir’s fuse plug had actually worked. Located east of the main dam at the entrance to the emergency spillway, the fuse plug was designed to be washed away when floodwater overtopped it. In an extreme emergency it could also be breached deliberately. The emergency spillway provides an alternative flood-release route when floods exceed the reservoir’s design standard and the normal spillway cannot release enough water, helping protect the main dam.
But at Liulan Reservoir, the main dam developed breaches while the fuse plug remained intact. Documents cited by Southern Weekly showed that the fuse plug had been formed by excavating a natural saddle in the terrain. The underlying rock had relatively low permeability and was hard.
The reservoir’s 2009 rehabilitation report pointed to another issue. A timber-processing plant stood near the emergency spillway, and the road into the village ran directly over the fuse plug. Long-term traffic had compacted the embankment, leaving it relatively dense and resistant to erosion. In other words, repeated vehicle traffic had made the dam less likely to wash away as intended.
“Lots of timber trucks used the road across the top of the dam,” a staff member said. “They hauled timber at night almost every day, and the trucks were overloaded. We tried to stop them but failed.” He said the reservoir had previously put up warning signs at both ends of the dam, but they had little effect. Publicly available government information describes Hengzhou as a major forestry hub in Guangxi, with Shitang, Maling and Yunbiao among the towns where wood-processing industries are concentrated.
After examining contours in 2014 satellite imagery, Xie Qi found that the reservoir’s fuse plug was wider than the main dam. He also noted a rise of approximately one meter on the reservoir-facing side and a firm connection with the hillside. “It rises even higher farther back,” he said, “greatly weakening its self-breaching function.”
“The emergency spillway did not serve its purpose at all. Why that happened deserves close investigation,” said the flood-control expert quoted earlier. The expert believed that, for the emergency spillway to protect the main dam at a critical moment, forced measures such as blasting the fuse plug would ordinarily have been needed. “But Liulan Reservoir clearly lacked the necessary preparations this time.”
Xie Zhijie said that blasting open the fuse plug might have prevented the main dam from developing a breach. But there had been little time to respond, and the station had no explosives. “If we had blown it open, Dengxu Village would also have suffered heavy losses,” he said.
Dengxu Village lies downstream of the fuse plug and is administered by Yunbiao Town. According to the Yunbiao Town government, the village had 7,165 permanent residents in 2021.
Blasting open the self-breaching dam also required approval from higher authorities. Xie said he tried to contact senior officials but could not reach them because of poor signal reception. “We had no satellite phone. That was a major problem. I kept calling and calling, but I couldn’t get through.” Phone records showed that at around 9 a.m. on July 6, he made 11 calls to the mayor of Hengzhou; none connected.
Xie said he also arranged for an excavator to come to the reservoir to dig open the fuse plug. WeChat messages showed that the staff member coordinating the equipment reported that the roads were too badly damaged for the excavator to enter the village.
Apart from the failure of the fuse plug, Xie also identified understaffing as a problem. A May 13, 2026, service-station meeting report listed 74 authorized posts but only 45 staff members were formally on its staffing roster, leaving staff with heavy workloads. In previous years, the station had employed more than 100 people at its peak.
On the day the reservoir was in danger, only 14 people were on duty at the main-dam station. That night, they were responsible not only for Liulan Reservoir but also for four smaller reservoirs under the station’s management: Dalu, Wang’an, Liudong and Xiniudong. Those 14 people had to issue public information, patrol the dam, monitor the water level and keep track of hydrological data.
Xie said the service station’s management team was normally supposed to consist of one chief and three deputy chiefs. “We’re in the middle of a leadership transition,” he said. “At present, there’s only one chief and one deputy. The vacancies weren’t filled in time, so we didn’t have enough people.”
At the time, Liulan Reservoir had recommended two candidates for deputy chief. One of them was Fang Yuan, the current head of Yunbiao Reservoir. A week later, the Hengzhou Water Resources Bureau proposed delaying the appointment of both deputy chiefs. Its specific response was that the appointments should be put on hold until a successor had been found for the head of the Yunbiao Reservoir service station.
(Breach at the Yunbiao Reservoir. Photo by Zhao Ming, Southern Weekly.)
(Excerpt from Liulan Reservoir’s 2020 dam-safety assessment report. Photo by Zheng Dan, Southern Weekly.)
The Collapse of Monitoring, Early Warning and Interagency Coordination
The last time Xie saw data from the hydrological center was at 10 p.m. on July 5. At that point, river data showed that the upstream water level stood at 129.67 meters and upstream flow had exceeded 604 cubic meters per second.
The hydrological station was located in Datian Village, Zhenlong Township, 14 kilometers upstream of Liulan Reservoir. Given the distance and terrain, its readings could not directly show inflows to the reservoir. Staff had to infer them using rainfall reports from people in the area.
Because of these constraints, staff could only use formulas to estimate inflow into Liulan Reservoir from its entire catchment area. “We tended to make high estimates,” Xie said. “We could only calculate on the basis of the most extreme rainfall. Usually it doesn’t reach that level, but this time it did.”
On the evening of July 5, after heavy rain hit Zhenlong Township, updates from the hydrological station stopped, leaving Liulan Reservoir without upstream data for reference. Staff used a water-level gauge to assess inflows and likely trends. “We observed all the reservoir water levels manually. We relied on our experience,” Xie said.
Xie said only two or three people at the service station knew how to read the water-level gauge. On the afternoon of July 5, a colleague noticed an unusually high reading. “We had never heard of a level that high, so we sent someone else to keep watching the gauge and confirm it,” Xie said.
The 2020 dam-safety appraisal report cited earlier also stated that the rainfall monitoring and reporting system had failed and had yet to be repaired, forcing staff to take readings themselves. Some monitoring items were likewise conducted manually, using methods the report described as “rudimentary and outdated.”
“We need to improve our flood forecasting capabilities,” Xie Qi said. He explained that except at some large reservoir complexes, most small and medium-sized reservoirs across China still rely on staff experience and manual water-level monitoring to gauge the scale of floods. This can lead to delays in forecasting. “By the time you detect the heavy rainfall, flash floods may already have arrived. By then, it’s too late.”
“Funding is one problem. Another is that the forecasting models we use are still deeply limited in what they can actually do and how widely they can be used,” Xie said. Although China began installing rainfall and hydrological monitoring stations on a large scale more than a decade ago to track flash floods and provide early warnings, he said, the systems still had their limitations. “Weather forecasts may tell you that rain is expected in a particular area. But exactly where it will fall and which places will be flooded still largely comes down to experience.”
The flood-control expert said meteorological, water resources and emergency management departments should establish a coordinated system. Specialists should assess rainfall and hydrological data in advance and devise more appropriate reservoir operating plans so warnings can be issued earlier. “How much rain falls upstream and how much water enters the reservoir determine whether and when the gates should be fully or partly opened. Those are matters the command authorities should weigh,” the expert said.
In the reservoir service station office, the Southern Weekly reporter saw a wall chart of the emergency-response structure. According to the chart, senior officials of the Hengzhou municipal government and relevant departments formed the Municipal Flood Control and Drought Relief Organization. Beneath it was a corresponding organization for Xiaoyi Town, with nine working groups responsible for general coordination; hydrology, meteorology and engineering; and directing emergency flood-response operations. The mayor of Hengzhou served as commander of the Flood Control Headquarters.
Under the 2026 Emergency Plan for Flood Control and Rescue at Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou, Nanning, the deputy commander of the Flood Control Headquarters is to lead consultations and oversee Level III responses, coordinating agencies, downstream warnings and staff on flood duty. For the more serious Level II and Level I responses, the headquarters commander must personally direct operations.
Around noon on the day Liulan Reservoir breached, Meng Keyu, the Hengzhou vice mayor responsible for water resources, arrived from the city center to direct operations at the reservoir. Staff recalled that poor reception made it difficult to contact people outside the site, hampering command and coordination.
On the afternoon of July 12, the Southern Weekly reporter tried to reach the mayor of Hengzhou by phone but could not get through. The following morning, he reached Meng, who said he could not speak at the time. “I’m on the front line of the flood response right now,” he said.
Based on his analysis of hydrological data, Hao Nan said Guangxi has a long history of water-resources development and relatively well-developed water infrastructure compared with many other parts of China. “This highlights the need for China to make further strategic changes to its traditional approach to water management and flood control as the climate changes and weather-related risks evolve,” he said.
Reconstruction after the disaster will take time. Hao said floodwaters were gradually receding across Guangxi. Once they had receded, the first priorities would be supplies and temporary shelter, followed by removing silt, disinfection and agricultural recovery. Infrastructure repair and rebuilding would come later. “Reconstruction in mountainous areas will be harder and take longer,” he said. “Recovery will be measured in years.”
Since the floods, Liulan Reservoir and nearby villages had remained without running water or electricity. The reservoir service station had become a temporary shelter for residents of nearby Dutian Village.
When the flooding struck, service-station staff rescued several people near the reservoir, all from Dutian, the nearest village. The emergency plan called for evacuation to the expressway, but with little time to act, Xie designated the service station as a temporary shelter.
Xie cleared out some rooms in the dormitory and office buildings, making space for villagers to sleep on the floor. He had no idea what lay ahead. For now, all he could do was stay at the service station with his colleagues and carry on with their duties. “There’s still so much to do,” he said. “We just have to get through this first.”
The Southern Weekly reporter Zhao Ming contributed to this report.