HONG KONG,– Floodwaters submerged streets and inundated homes across southern and central China on Tuesday, with at least 21 people killed as torrential rain triggered widespread chaos, forcing school and business closures and disrupting transport and power supplies, authorities said.
China’s weather agency warned that areas of Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan faced a high risk of rain-related disasters, including landslides, flash floods and severe urban flooding and waterlogging.
Authorities said they had allocated 150 million yuan ($22.04 million) for disaster relief and launched emergency responses in several affected regions.
Images posted on Chinese video platform Douyin showed residents in Jingzhou, a city in central Hubei, wading through knee-deep water and even catching fish swimming in the streets. Some cars were nearly completely submerged on roads surrounded by residential and commercial buildings.
Ten people were confirmed dead after a pickup truck carrying 15 farm workers plunged into a flooded river in China’s southwestern region of Guangxi amid heavy rain, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
In separate incidents, heavy rain and flooding killed four people in southwestern Guizhou province, four others in southern Hunan province, and three in a low-lying village in central Hubei province, CCTV said. A number of people remain missing.
Schools, businesses and transport services have been suspended, and authorities are relocating residents in parts of Hubei and Hunan, state media reported.
Heavy rain expected along Yangtze River
The unusually large area of intense rainfall – spanning more than 1,000 km (621 miles) – was due to the convergence of abundant moisture from the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The slow-moving nature of the weather system also led to high cumulative rainfall, according to Chinese meteorologists.
China’s National Meteorological Centre said severe weather would gradually move east and south across China over the next two days. From Wednesday, the heaviest rainfall is expected along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
China’s southern Hainan island issued a geological disaster warning on Tuesday after a mountainside collapsed onto a highway in Lingshui, prompting authorities to close several major roads in that area of the island.
Separately, authorities in Guangxi set up temporary shelters at 99 sites for more than 4,000 residents and relocated 7,000 people after a magnitude 5.2 earthquake on Monday, which sent tremors across multiple cities in the region.
