Latest news with #Rongjiang
Khaleej Times
9 hours ago
- Climate
- Khaleej Times
Over 80,000 people flee severe flooding in southwest China
Flooding in China's southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said on Wednesday, as a collapsed bridge forced the dramatic rescue of a truck driver left dangling over the edge. China is enduring a summer of extremes, with heat waves scorching wide swaths of the country while rainstorms pummel other regions. Climate change -- which scientists say is exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions -- is making such weather more frequent and more intense. Around 80,900 people had been evacuated by Tuesday afternoon in the southwestern province of Guizhou, state news agency Xinhua reported. "It's very bad this time," Xiong Xin, a member of a rescue team who was in Rongjiang county on Tuesday, told AFP, describing the flooding as a "once-in-50-year event". Images shared with AFP by Xiong showed a row of shops on the first floor of a building submerged, with residents leaning out of second-floor windows. In Rongjiang a football field was "submerged under three metres of water", Xinhua said. Rescuers pushed boats carrying residents through murky, knee-high water and children waited in a kindergarten as emergency personnel approached them, the footage showed. One resident in an affected area told Xinhua "the water rose very quickly". "I stayed on the third floor waiting for rescue. By the afternoon I had been transferred to safety." Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed severe flooding has inundated villages and collapsed a bridge in one mountainous area of the province. A team was also seen preparing a drone to deliver supplies including rice to flood victims. In a video circulated by local media, truck driver You Guochun recounted his harrowing rescue after he ended up perched over the edge of a broken bridge segment. "A bridge collapsed entirely in front of me," he said. "I was terrified." - Alerts - China's top economic planning body has allocated 100 million yuan ($13.95 million) for disaster relief in Guizhou, Xinhua said. Floods have also hit neighbouring Guangxi region, with state media publishing videos of rescuers there carrying residents to safety. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated last week in the central province of Hunan due to heavy rain. And nearly 70,000 people in southern China were relocated days earlier after heavy flooding caused by Typhoon Wutip. Chinese authorities issued the year's first red alerts last week for mountain torrents in six regions -- the most severe warning level in the country's four-tier system. Some areas in the affected regions were "extremely likely to be hit", Xinhua reported, with local governments urged to issue timely warnings to residents. Authorities in Beijing this week issued the second-highest heat warning for the capital on one of its hottest days of the year so far. Last year was China's hottest on record. China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter but is also a renewable energy powerhouse, seeking to cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2060.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Over 80,000 people flee severe flooding in southwest China
Flooding in China's southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said on Wednesday, as a collapsed bridge forced the dramatic rescue of a truck driver left dangling over the edge. China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with heat waves scorching wide swaths of the country while rainstorms pummel other regions. Around 80,900 people had been evacuated by Tuesday afternoon in the southwestern province of Guizhou, state news agency Xinhua reported. In Rongjiang county a football field was "submerged under three meters of water", the news agency said. Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed severe flooding has inundated villages and collapsed a bridge in one mountainous area of the province. Rescuers pushed boats carrying residents through murky, knee-high water and children waited in a kindergarten as emergency personnel approached them, the footage showed. "The water rose very quickly," resident Long Tian told Xinhua. "I stayed on the third floor waiting for rescue. By the afternoon, I had been transferred to safety." A team was also seen preparing a drone to deliver supplies including rice to flood victims. And in a video circulated by local media, truck driver You Guochun recounted his harrowing rescue after he ended up perched over the edge of a broken bridge segment. "A bridge collapsed entirely in front of me," he said. "I was terrified." - Extreme weather - Floods have also hit the neighbouring Guangxi region, with state media publishing videos of rescuers there carrying residents to safety. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated last week in the central Chinese province of Hunan due to heavy rain. And nearly 70,000 people in southern China were relocated days earlier after heavy flooding caused by Typhoon Wutip. Chinese authorities issued the year's first red alerts last week for mountain torrents in six regions -- the most severe warning level in the country's four-tier system. Some areas in the affected regions were "extremely likely to be hit", Xinhua reported, with local governments urged to issue timely warnings to residents. Climate change -- which scientists say is exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions -- is making such extreme weather phenomena more frequent and more intense. Authorities in Beijing this week issued the second-highest heat warning for the capital on one of its hottest days of the year so far. Last year was China's hottest on record and the past four were its warmest ever. China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter but is also a renewable energy powerhouse, seeking to cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2060. bur-tjx/oho/lb
The Sun
a day ago
- Climate
- The Sun
Shock moment floods swamp shopping centre turning escalators into waterfalls & washing cars into underground garages
THIS is the moment floodwaters surge through a shopping centre in southwest China - as the region faces its highest flood levels in decades. Murky torrents flow from escalators and upper floors, sweeping shop objects away in dramatic scenes. 4 4 In footage filmed on Tuesday at the largest shopping mall in Rongjiang County, Guizhou, torrents of water can be seen cascading down escalators and upper floors. Various objects - some appearing to be items of clothing, others chairs - are dragged into the currents. Cars were also reportedly washed into underground garages as a result of the torrential floods that submerged much of the city. The alert was raised on Friday when continuous heavy rains drove the water level of the Rongjiang River to 114.6 metres. On Tuesday, authorities in Rongjiang raised the flood alert to its highest level, warning that river levels could peak at 255 metres. The county - which has a population of about 300,000 - has not seen these flood levels in 30 years, according to newspaper China Daily. Resident Wu Hanjun told the newspaper on Tuesday afternoon: "The rain has stopped now, but the floodwaters are still quite high and expected to rise." Residents in most of the old town and parts of the new district were reportedly told to move to higher-ground shelters on Tuesday, as per an evacuation order. China experiences regular flooding during the summer due to the East Asian monsoon, which brings heavy, continuous rainfall from June to August. Warm, moist air from the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean also feeds storms, causing rivers to overflow. Spain swamped by floods as two-hour rain deluge leaves drivers trapped in cars & streets underwater as emergency declared It comes as southern China saw torrential rains in April 2024, swelling the Bei River in Guangdong by up to 19 feet above warning levels. Over 110,000 residents were evacuated, and more than a million households experienced power outages. Shocking footage shows cars being swept away by powerful flood currents. Photos also reveal vehicles submerged in water and rescue workers carrying people through chest-deep floodwaters out of buildings. In July 2021, floods devastated Zhengzhou, in China's Henan province flooded - after the heaviest rainfall recorded in over a millennium in that region. The rains submerged parts of the city, including subway lines. Distressing footage shows panicked passengers trapped in Zhengzhou's subway - flooded to shoulder-deep levels - texting their final goodbyes. Hundreds of people had to be rescued as carriages became submerged. At least 25 people died as a result of the floods in central China, while over 100,000 were forced to flee as cities became submerged. 4
Reuters
a day ago
- Climate
- Reuters
Heavy rain leaves southwest China under water; more storms on horizon
BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - Vulnerable communities were told to seek refuge on higher ground as multiple rivers burst their banks after days of rain in China's flood-hit province of Guizhou, the southwestern end of a seasonal rain belt that stretches all the way to Japan. At least two riverside cities - Congjiang and Rongjiang - each with a population of over 300,000, on Tuesday told residents on the banks of fast-rising rivers and in low-lying areas to flee. The mountainous province of Guizhou and other parts of southern China have been battered by heavy rains since last week as the annual East Asia monsoon kicked into high gear, breaking rainfall records in parts of China. While China is no stranger to summer floods, some scientists warn that climate change is ushering in heavier and more frequent rain. Massive flooding could trigger unforeseen "black swan" events with extreme consequences such as dam collapses, government officials say. On a highway to Rongjiang on Tuesday, a viaduct collapsed after a landslide toppled concrete columns and sent one section of the road crashing down the hillside, local media reported. A cargo truck that had stopped in time as the section ahead of it fell away was perched perilously over the edge while its driver waited to be rescued, a video shared on social media showed. In other parts of Guizhou, many highway sections were blocked by landslides or were hit by cave-ins. In cities such as Rongjiang, flooded streets paralysed local traffic and low-lying areas including underground garages and shopping mall basements were under water. More rain is expected over the next few days, state meteorologists forecast, warning that provinces, including Guizhou, hit by overlapping storms should be especially on their guard. In contrast, provinces north of the seasonal rain belt such as Henan, Shandong and Hebei, as well as the capital Beijing, sweltered in temperatures just shy of 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday. In an annual report, opens new tab on Monday, the World Meteorological Organization under the United Nations cautioned that Asia was warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, fuelling more extreme weather and exacting a heavy toll on the region.
