242,000 people have been evacuated in eastern China after heavy rains hit much of the country, causing the Yangtze River to swell, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
On Tuesday afternoon, July 2, the rains had ravaged “Thirty-six counties and districts in seven prefecture-level cities in Anhui, according to the provincial emergency management department” and affected 991,000 residents, including 242,000 who had to be evacuated, the agency detailed.
The news outlet also said water levels on the Yangtze River, China’s longest at 6,380 kilometers, had exceeded alert levels in its section that flows through Anhui, a province west of Shanghai. Alert levels for 20 other rivers and six lakes in the region were also raised due to the torrential rains.
Footage from state television CCTV on Wednesday showed a stretch of the Yangtze River rising so high that it almost completely covered a sculpture in the city of Wuhu that normally sits 12 meters above the water. Other footage showed volunteers in red vests patrolling the river banks, carrying umbrellas and life jackets and buoys that they stored nearby.
More than 100 millimeters of rain were recorded in the 24-hour period from Monday to Tuesday by hundreds of weather stations in Anhui Province, according to Xinhua. In Hexi County, near the provincial capital Hefei, about 260 millimeters were counted. Tens of thousands of state officials have been deployed to monitor dams and levees along the Yangtze River, the official agency said.
Rain is forecast to continue from Wednesday to Friday and a warning for possible “geological disasters” was issued in the south.
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Extreme weather conditions in China
Last week, four people died and another was missing after a landslide in central Hunan followed record rainfall.
Heavy rains in previous days had already caused flooding, particularly in the southern province of Guangdong, emblematic of China’s manufacturing power. At least 38 people lost their lives there.
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China has been experiencing extreme weather and locally unusual temperatures in recent months. The country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases — a key factor, climate change scientists say, that is making such weather disturbances more frequent and intense.
Read the report (2021): Article reserved for our subscribers Floods in Henan: “We sacrifice one village to save the others”
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