Rescue crews raced to clear debris and flooded roads as southern China braced for more extreme rainfall and spreading infection after some of the worst downpours this century, brought by a peak in East Asian monsoon rains.
Forecasters warned of more thunderstorms after the century’s second-heaviest August rains pounded Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, forcing its Baiyun airport, one of the world’s busiest, to cancel 363 flights and delay 311.
The day before, the skies above Hong Kong and the high-tech cities of China’s Pearl River Delta turned livid and dumped the heaviest August rainfall since 1884 on the Asian financial hub.
Rescue teams in Guangdong scrambled to open drains and pump water away from urban areas yesterday as the intense rain set off mudslides and felled trees on highways, ripping up roads to expose cabling and other infrastructure.
Video images showed roads transformed into brown waterways, threatening to worsen a major outbreak of chikungunya, fuelled by mosquitoes thriving in stagnant flood water, which had been on a downtrend before the latest rains.
Guangdong had reported more than 7,000 of the virus infections earlier.
China has suffered weeks of atmospheric chaos since July, battered by heavier-than-usual downpours with the East Asian monsoon stalling over its north and south.
Weather experts link the shifting pattern to climate change, testing officials as flash floods displace thousands and threaten billions of dollars in economic losses.
On Tuesday, Beijing allocated more than 1 billion yuan (RM588.4mil) in disaster relief for Guangdong and the Hebei province, as well as Beijing, and the northern region of Inner Mongolia, news agency Xinhua said, including subsidies for damage to grain-growing areas.
“The rains will drive up prices for fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Dan Wang, a China expert at Eurasia Group.
While some farmers might be able to exploit the situation to their benefit, agricultural losses would hit incomes as a whole, she added.
Cold chain storage providers could benefit, she said, while higher prices could sustain consumer prices, after the latest data showed the first rise in five months.
Even e-commerce may not be immune, as a landslide north of Guangzhou early yesterday hit “Taobao Village”, a community where many households run shops on China’s Alibaba platform, trapping 14 people, with half the number still missing.
Across the province, 16 rivers threaten to breach their banks, with water levels at two sites reaching their highest since 2017 and 2018.
But the worst may be yet to come, with two to three typhoons expected to strike this month, emergency management authorities said on Tuesday. — Reuters
