Northern and western China remain on high alert as torrential rain threatens to bring more flash flooding and landslides, following weather-related deaths in other parts of the country.
Red alerts were in force on Thursday as rains made their way to Gansu province in the northwest and then up to Liaoning province in the northeast.
The weather warnings came as more than 1,000 rescue workers were sent on Wednesday to Taiping, a town in the central Henan province, where five people died and three were declared missing after a river burst its banks, according to state media.
Another state media report confirmed that two people were killed by a landslide at a construction site in Gansu after heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday.
Meanwhile, a record summer downpour hit the city of Xianfeng in China’s central province of Hubei, bringing more than a month’s rain in just 12 hours, with local videos showing torrents washing away cars.
On Tuesday, the authorities there evacuated 18,000 people, closed schools and suspended bus services.
During a two-day trip to the northern province of Hebei, China’s Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing urged local officials to ramp up the scale of evacuations.
Although China has a nationwide system to forecast and monitor severe weather, scientists say it is hard to make localised predictions, especially in rural communities that lack forecasting capabilities.
“Accurately forecasting the intensity and exact location of heavy rain remains challenging, especially with climate change and the complex terrain of rural areas,” Meng Gao, a climate modelling specialist at Hong Kong Baptist University, told the Reuters news agency earlier this week.
Last July, the “plum rains”, which coincide with the plum-ripening season, caused more than $10bn in economic losses in China.
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