ON FLOOD ALERT
Although no longer a typhoon, Danas’ residual vortex and the substantial amount of water it carries could still wreak havoc in southern China, where rapid urbanisation has sealed vast stretches of land beneath impermeable concrete.
That risk materialised some 1,500km away in Yibin, a city in southwestern Sichuan province, where over 6,000 people were evacuated on Wednesday after 14 hours of rain. State broadcaster CCTV showed firefighters carrying residents out of rising waters that had flooded the lower floors of apartment buildings.
In Zhaotong, a city about a three-hour drive from Yibin, more than 7,000 people were evacuated and five were reported missing amid heavy rains, CCTV reported on Wednesday. One county recorded 227.8mm of rainfall within 24 hours, the highest local single-day total since records began in 1958.
Meanwhile, over 300 people had to be relocated following a flash flood near the foothills of the Himalayas in China’s Tibet, caused by a river in Gyirong bursting its banks.
Conditions in northern China were not much better, as authorities in the city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei province activated emergency flood protocols after some districts received more than 100mm millimetres of overnight rain.
HEAT-WAVES
The subtropical high-pressure system, straddling the monsoonal clouds in China’s interior and the rain bands of Danas, continued to hang over central China and the eastern seaboard running from Shanghai towards Beijing on Wednesday, bringing near-record heat to the mega-cities of Shanghai, Wuhan and Changsha.
People in China’s northeast were encouraged to avoid going outside when the sun is at its peak during the afternoon and to be mindful of dehydration, following reports of heatstroke-related fatalities over the past week.
China does not provide an official count of heat-related deaths, although domestic media occasionally report fatalities citing local authorities. In 2022, the country endured a 79-day heatwave from mid-June to late August – its worst since 1961.
A 2023 study published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that more than 50,000 heat-related deaths occurred that year.
Read the full article here
