HONG KONG, May 20 (Reuters) – Rescue workers used boats or swam through floodwaters to evacuate people in waterlogged areas across central and southwest China on Wednesday after torrential rain killed at least 25 people and shut businesses, schools and transport links.
Heavy rain is expected to continue across southern and central parts of the country, including Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan, with high risks of landslides, flash floods and severe urban flooding and waterlogging, authorities said.
In Dachong, a town in southern Guangdong, scooters were submerged with only parts of the handlebars visible, while rescue staff in an inflatable boat rescued a man who had climbed a tree to escape the flooding, videos on Chinese platform Douyin showed.
In the central province of Hubei, emergency and military personnel were seen helping residents escape danger, many of them senior citizens.
Elderly residents were rescued from their homes by boats, with some staff swimming inside buildings to reach trapped residents, footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed.
One scene broadcast by CCTV showed rescuers struggling to reach a man trapped in chest-high water behind a door. It said they took an hour to get him to safety.
Aerial footage showed floods swamping vast areas across Hubei as well as its southern neighbour, Hunan.
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.
“A new round of rainfall will arrive tomorrow (Thursday), bringing significant precipitation to many areas in both the north and south,” China’s weather bureau said. Authorities said areas including Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, and Guangdong would experience torrential rain.
(Reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and the Beijing newsroom;)
