Torrential rains hit southern China from last weekend to Tuesday, triggering landslides and causing rivers to burst their banks, causing roads to collapse and houses to collapse.
Landslides and flash floods killed at least nine people in Fujian and neighboring Guangdong, China’s most populous province, and dozens were still trapped or missing as of Tuesday.
Days of heavy rain have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate, and more than 100,000 households in the region have lost power due to flooding.
As of Monday, water levels in at least 17 rivers in Guangdong, a province with a population of about 127 million, exceeded warning levels, according to local media reports.
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Video footage showed bridges collapsing into rushing rivers and debris floating on city streets after hundreds of buildings collapsed.
While officials and rescue workers in the south struggle to control flooding, the north faces the opposite problem, with high temperatures and little rainfall drying out the country. The heat has triggered warnings of crop damage in many parts of the country. China’s Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday it has allocated 443 million yuan to help areas affected by recent high temperatures and lack of rain with replanting, watering and fertilizer.
Officials in the central province of Henan increased discharge from a local reservoir last week to respond to drought conditions.
According to China’s official media reports, on Tuesday afternoon, top leader Xi Jinping issued instructions on the disaster situation, saying that as China fully enters the main flood season, the flood prevention situation is becoming increasingly severe.
Officials warned that the bad weather would continue. On Tuesday, the China Meteorological Administration issued a heavy rain and landslide alert for southern provinces that have been hit by heavy rains. It also warned that temperatures could reach 37 degrees Celsius in the north.
In April, nearly 20,000 people were reportedly evacuated from northern Guangdong when nine rivers were at risk of flooding.
Last year, unusually heavy rains disrupted the summer harvest in Henan. Just weeks later, when the heaviest rains in more than a century hit northern China, nearly a million people were forced to evacuate villages in neighboring Hebei province and around Beijing as officials redirected floodwaters to protect the capital, angering residents whose homes and farmland were flooded.
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