More than 100,000 people have been evacuated due to heavy rains and deadly floods in the south Chinawhere the government issued this Tuesday its maximum alert level for rainfall in parts of the province of Canton.
An unprecedented phenomenon in 100 years
The province has experienced heavy rains since Thursday, causing rivers to swell and threatening floods “not seen in a century.”
The city of Shenzhen, with a population of more than 17 million and bordering Hong Kong, is experiencing “heavy to very intense rainfall,” the local meteorological observatory said on Tuesday.
However, authorities later reduced the weather warning as the storms subsided, but urged residents to remain vigilant for possible disasters.
Images from the city of Qingyuan, north of Guangzhou and in the Pearl River Delta, showed a building almost completely submerged.
Official media reported Sunday that more than 45,000 people were evacuated from Qingyuan, a city crossed by the Bei River, a tributary of the Pearl River, China’s third-longest river.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that 110,000 Guangzhou residents have been relocated since the rains began over the weekend.
According to the state press, four deaths and missing people have been reported so far due to the floods.
Alarms, ship collisions, landslides and destroyed houses
In Foshan, central Guangzhou, four more people were missing after a boat collided with a bridge, an incident that “may be due to flooding,” Xinhua reported on Tuesday, citing authorities.
The ship, which was carrying nearly 5,000 tons of steel coils, collided with the Jiujiang Bridge on Monday evening, plunging several of its 11 crew members into the water.
Seven of them were rescued before the ship sank, the remaining four remain missing.
With 127 million residents, Canton is China’s most populous province and the pillar of the country’s manufacturing industry, with tens of thousands of export-focused factories.
Southern China experiences heavy rains in the northern summer, the rainy season in this region, where multiple typhoons are common. But in spring these rains are not common.
The Asian country has suffered several episodes of extreme weather events in recent years, from severe floods to droughts to record heat levels.
Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions (of which China is the largest emitter) is causing these types of extreme events to become more frequent and intense.
According to state media, Shenzhen recorded its heaviest rainfall in September since 1952, when this meteorological data began being recorded.
The weather also caused landslides in some mountainous regions.
Six people were injured and several were trapped by a landslide near the city of Jiangwan in northern Guangdong province, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Images distributed by this medium show houses on the banks of a river destroyed by a flood of mud and rescue workers caring for evacuees on a waterlogged sports field.
AFP.
