The Yellow River (Huang He) in China is prone to flooding, due to the broad expanse of largely flat land around it. The 1887 Yellow River floods devastated the area, killing between 900,000-2,000,000 people. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded. For centuries, the farmers living near the Yellow River had built dikes to contain the rising waters, caused by silt accumulation on the riverbed. In 1887, this rising seabed, coupled with days of heavy rain, overcame the dikes, causing a massive flood. The waters of the Yellow River are generally thought to have broken through the dikes in Huayankou, near the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province. Owing to the low-lying plains near the area, the flood spread quickly throughout Northern China, covering an estimate 50,000 square miles, swamping agricultural settlements and commercial centers. After the flood, two million were left homeless. The resulting pandemic and lack of basic essentials claimed as many lives as those lost directly by the flood itself. It was one of the worst floods in history, though the later 1931 Yellow River flood may have killed as many as four million people. Yellow River (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: Huáng Hé ; Wade-Giles: Hwang-ho, sometimes simply called the River in ancient Chinese) is the second longest river in China (after the Yangtze River) and the seventh longest in the world, at 3,395 miles long [1]. Originating in the... Dyke (normal International spelling) or Dike (normal American spelling) can mean several things: A dyke / dike is a long wall built to keep out the sea or enclose land. ... Zhengzhou (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ), formerly called Zhengxian (traditional form: Chengchow) , is a prefecture-level city and the capital of Henan province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Henan (Chinese: 河南; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ho-nan), is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. ... A pandemic (from Greek παν pan all + δήμος demos people) is an epidemic (an outbreak of an infectious disease) that spreads across a large region (example a continent), or even worldwide. ... The 1931 Yellow River flood (Huang He flood) is generally thought to be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded, and almost certainly of the twentieth century (when pandemics are discounted). ...

See also

• Natural disasters in China