QINGYUAN, April 22 — Rescuers on boats in China’s flood-hit Guangdong province raced to evacuate trapped residents, carrying some elderly people by piggyback from their homes and deploying helicopters to save villagers caught in landslides.
But since Thursday (April 18), Guangdong has been battered by unusually heavy, sustained and widespread rainfall, with powerful storms ushering in an earlier-than-normal start to the region’s annual flooding season.
Scientists say global warming has made weather events in China more intense and unpredictable. Record-breaking rainfall and drought have often occurred simultaneously, assailing the world’s second-largest economy.
Precipitation records for April have already been broken in many parts of Guangdong, with the cities of Shaoguan, Qingyuan, Zhaoqing, and Jiangmen to the west and north of the provincial capital, Guangzhou, half-submerged in flood-waters.
Yesterday, domestic flights arriving in Guangzhou were briefly cancelled, and international ones were delayed. Some foreign carriers flying to other Chinese destinations even took big detours to avoid the area.
No fatalities in Guangdong were reported, although 11 people in the province were still missing by Monday morning, state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported without giving further details.
Two companies in the province told Reuters there had been no immediate impact on business or supply chains.
“Everything is 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 like Apple, Huawei, and Samsung, also said its operations were not affected.
However, many rivers remained swollen today at levels above safety thresholds, and rainfall in recent days has been two to three times more than what is normally seen at this time of the year.
Economic loss
Across the province, 36 houses collapsed while 48 were severely damaged, resulting in a direct economic loss of nearly 140.6 million yuan (RM92.34 million), Xinhua reported.
In Qingyuan, the Bei River that cuts through the city swelled over the weekend and submerged some houses and shops alongside the Pearl River tributary.
Aerial footage showed flood waters overwhelming a nearby town, leaving only roofs and treetops untouched.
Rescuers in Qingyuan tackled muddy waters, neck-high in some areas, to extract residents, including an elderly lady trapped in waist-deep water in an apartment building, videos on social media showed.
Other social media videos showed water gushing through roads and vehicles in disarray.
In Shaoguan, landslides trapped villagers who had to be rescued by helicopter while other rescuers travelled on foot to reach cut-off disaster sites.
The Chinese military also stepped in to help clear roads.
The rains eased early today, but some schools in the province were suspended.
In Guangxi, a region west of Guangdong, the heavy rain has affected nearly 100,000 people, with direct economic losses totalling 284.5 million yuan (RM187.77 million).
The strong 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.
Chinese meteorologists said the stronger subtropical high led to warmer temperatures that drew in more moisture-laden air from the South China Sea and even the Bay of Bengal, resulting in intense precipitation.
Thunderstorms are expected to return later in the week after a brief respite, marking an unusually early wet spell that is more typical in the months of May and June.
— Reuters
