China has evacuated over a hundred thousand (100,000) people from areas on the upper reaches of China's Yangtze river as flooding threatened a 1,200-year-old World Heritage Site.

The flood made up of muddy water rose over its toes for the first time since 1949, but the Staff, police and volunteers used sandbags to try and protect the 71-metre (233-foot) Leshan Giant Buddha, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site in southwestern Sichuan province.

In its bid to cope with the new round of torrential rainfall, Sichuan, situated along the Yangtze, raised its emergency response to the maximum level on Tuesday with the Yangtze Water Resources Commission, the government body that oversees the river, declaring a red alert late on Tuesday and saying water at some monitoring stations was expected to exceed "guaranteed" flood protection levels by more than five metres (16.4 feet).

However, the Three Gorges Project, a massive hydroelectric facility designed as part of efforts to control the floods on the Yangtze, is expected to see water inflows rise to 74,000 cubic metres per second today, the highest since it was built, the Ministry of Water Resources reported.

According to report, the project limits the amount of water flowing downstream by storing it in its reservoir, which has been at least 10 metres (33 feet) higher than its official warning level for more than a month.

The water ministry also reported that the facility was forced to raise water discharge volumes yesterday in order to "reduce flood control pressures