Floods on the upper ranges of China’s Yangtze river constrained specialists to clear in excess of 100,000 individuals on Tuesday and threatened a 1,200-year-old world heritage site.

Staff, police and volunteers used sandbags to attempt to secure the 71-meter (233-foot) Leshan Giant Buddha, an UNESCO World Heritage site in southwestern Sichuan territory, as muddy flood water rose over its toes for the first time since 1949, state broadcaster CCTV revealed.

Sichuan, through which the Yangtze stream streams, raised its crisis reaction to the greatest level on Tuesday to adapt to another round of heavy precipitation.

The Yangtze Water Resources Commission, the government body that directs the river, proclaimed a red alarm late on Tuesday, saying water at some monitoring stations was relied upon to surpass “guaranteed” flood security levels by more than 5 meters.

The Three Gorges Project, a gigantic hydroelectric facility planned to a limited extent to tame floods on the Yangtze, is relied upon to see water inflows ascend to 74,000 cubic meters for every second on Wednesday, the most elevated since it was assembled, the Ministry of Water Resources said.

The task confines the measure of water flowing downstream by storing it in its reservoir, which has been more than 10 meters higher than its official warning level for over a month.

The facility had to raise water release volumes on Tuesday so as to “reduce flood control pressures”, the water ministry said.

Specialists have been making careful effort to show that the cascade of mammoth dams and repositories worked along the Yangtze’s upper ranges have protected the region from the most exceedingly awful of the floods this year, however pundits state they may be compounding the situation.