Four people were dead and 10 others missing following storms that battered southern China, state media said yesterday, with tens of thousands evacuated from areas hit by torrential downpours.
Heavy rain has descended upon the vast southern province of Guangdong, swelling rivers and raising fears of severe flooding that state media said could be of the sort only “seen around once a century.”
“Three deaths were reported in Zhaoqing city, while the remaining one is a rescuer in Shaoguan city,” Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities.
Photo: AFP
Ten other people remained missing as search-and-rescue efforts in the area continued to be carried out, Xinhua said.
China is no stranger to extreme weather, but recent years have seen the nation hit by severe floods, grinding droughts and record heat.
More than 110,000 people have been relocated across Guangdong, Xinhua said.
Of those, more than 45,000 were evacuated from the northern city of Qingyuan, which straddles the banks of the Bei River, a tributary in the wider Pearl River Delta, state media reported on Sunday.
The heavy rain continued yesterday, with meteorological authorities forecasting “thunderstorms and strong winds in Guangdong’s coastal waters” — a stretch of sea bordering major cities including Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
Neighboring provinces, including parts of Fujian, Guizhou and Guangxi, were also affected by “short-term heavy rainfall,” the National Meteorological Centre said.
“It is expected that the main impact period of strong convection will last from daytime until night,” it added.
Authorities yesterday issued a yellow alert for rainstorms — the second-lowest in its four-tier system — with high levels of precipitation expected to continue across large swathes of the nation.
Guangdong Province is China’s densely populated manufacturing heartland, home to about 127 million people.
In the town of Jiangwan, six people were injured and a number were trapped in landslides caused by heavy rain on Sunday, state media reported.
Photographs published by state broadcaster China Central Television showed waterfront homes destroyed by a wall of brown mud and people sheltering in a soaked public sports court.
The broadcaster on Sunday reported that floods as high as 5.8m above the warning limit would strike Pearl River tributaries yesterday morning.
Climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and intense, and China is the world’s biggest emitter.
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