A tropical storm has killed two people, caused dam breaches and forced tens of thousands to evacuate in southern China.
Typhoon Maysak killed two people in Nanning, in China’s southern Guangxi province. Maysak, which lashed Vietnam and China’s southern island province of Hainan over the weekend, will dump the water it sucked up on its way across the South China Sea as it weakens and heads inland, meteorologists say.
About 55,000 people were already affected by floods in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi region, and waters were overflowing or breaking through barriers at three reservoirs, the city’s deputy mayor Wei Jiang said on Monday. Approximately 48,000 people were evacuated.
Authorities raised the flood control emergency response to its highest level as a result of “extremely heavy rain” that they said could make things worse and hamper rescue efforts.
About 170 miles (270km) away in the city of Guigang, flood waters turned a wide road into a lake, submerging cars and cascading in brown torrents down a hill into a building site.
The water level at Guigang hydrological station had risen to 42 metres by 12.30pm, the ministry of water resources said in a statement.
Farther south in Fangchenggang, another verified video showed a small car being washed down a street. The water rose to the level of another car’s steering wheel and a man could be seen struggling to keep his electric scooter from being swept away.
Meanwhile, five people have died in heavy rains in northern China, including two people in a flash flood on Saturday evening in Inner Mongolia and three others the same day in Fushun, Liaoning province.
China is also on alert for Super Typhoon Bavi, which is making its way across the Pacific Ocean towards Taiwan. The US National Weather Service said it was bringing winds of up to 180mph as it made its way across the islands of Guam, Tinian, Saipan and Rota on Monday.
Weather authorities warned that Bavi would bring strong winds and heavy rain to eastern China from Thursday, according to the state news agency Xinhua. China, the world’s second-largest economy, faces growing threats from extreme weather, which meteorologists link to the climate crisis.
Analysts say weather-related risks each year stand to wipe out tens of billions of dollars’ worth of commercial activity, as cities flood, industrial activity stalls and crops are submerged or washed away.
Maysak made landfall in the southern island province of Hainan on Friday, the first tropical cyclone to reach the Chinese mainland this year. The storm made its second landfall on Sunday in Vietnam, which shares a border with Guangxi. In the Vietnamese border city of Mong Cai, the storm brought down trees and ripped metal roofs from buildings, state media reported, as it made its way into China.
Heavy rainfall is expected across Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and other regions in the coming days, according to Chinese meteorologists. The three areas alone are home to more than 150 million people – more than the population of Russia.
