Guangdong floods: Heavy rainstorms swept across southern China in the past six days, killing several people in riverside cities. According to local media reports, the rescue is still searching for 10 people who went missing since Sunday. The official Xinhua news agency said three people died in Zhaoqing city while one rescuer died in Shaoguan city. It didn’t say when or how they died. The weather department has predicted heavy rainfall in the Guangdong region on Thursday.
Citing Chen Min, vice minister of water resources, called for action to strengthen flood control in the basins of the Yangtze River and Taihu Lake, China’s third-largest freshwater lake. The two cities in Guangdong province are among the worst-hit areas of sustained torrential rains that began late last week.
Car swept away in massive floods
Footages showed a car getting swept away by a flooded river’s raging currents after China’s Guangdong province experienced several days of major downpours and strong winds.
Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed rescuers in rubber boats evacuating residents from flooded shopping streets and residential areas. By Monday, about 110,000 people had been evacuated across the province, while 25,800 people were in emergency shelters, according to Xinhua.
In Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, the government said that as of 10 am on Monday, the city had logged a cumulative rainfall of 60.9 centimeters in April — the highest monthly rainfall since record-keeping began in 1959.
Heavy rainstorm warning for multiple regions
China’s Central Meteorological Observatory extended a rainstorm warning through Thursday evening, with heavy rain expected in large swaths of southern China, including parts of the Guangxi region and Guangdong and Fujian provinces.
Floods also battered neighboring Jiangxi province. CCTV, citing the Jiangxi Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said 459 people had been evacuated. Rains and floods have affected 1,500 hectares of crops in the province and caused financial losses of more than 41 million yuan ($5.7 million).
Across the province, 36 houses collapsed while 48 were severely damaged, resulting in a direct economic loss of nearly 140.6 million yuan, Xinhua reported. Two companies told Reuters there had been no immediate impact on business or supply chains. “Everything’s running as usual and everyone got to work,” said a person who answered the phone at Camelot PCB, a print circuit board company that supplies Tesla and other electric vehicle makers.
Polyrocks Chemical, a plastics company that supplies technology giants such as Apple Huawei and Samsung, also said its operations were not affected. Many rivers remained swollen on Monday, however, at levels above safety thresholds, with rainfall in recent days two to three times more than normal at this time of the year.
The intense convective weather in southern China was caused by a stronger-than-normal subtropical high, a semi-permanent high-pressure system circulating north of the equator. The subtropical high led to warmer temperatures that drew in more moisture-laden air from the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal, Chinese meteorologists said, resulting in intense precipitation.
(With inputs from agency)
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