Heavy rain struck China's southwestern Guizhou province again on Saturday, half-submerging the flood-stricken riverside city of Rongjiang for a second time in a week and prompting the evacuation of residents to higher ground.
Located at the confluence of three rivers and home to 300,000 residents, Rongjiang was inundated last week by record downpours that left six dead and forced more than 80,000 people to flee their homes. The amount of rain that fell over 72-hours was double the city's average for June.
In response to the new round of flooding, authorities raised the city's flood emergency response level to the highest level on Saturday.
The benchmark hydrological station on one of the rivers estimated the peak water level would hit 253.5m at about 5pm, exceeding the safety threshold by 2m, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Last week the peak water level reached 256.7m, the highest since 1954, the Guizhou provincial government said in a statement to Reuters on Friday, blaming “the extreme climate” for the flooding.
The floods in southwest China are set to hit local economies.
Rongjiang was removed from the national poverty list in 2020. It saw an unexpected tourism boom after a local soccer league nicknamed “Village Super League” became a social media sensation, attracting thousands of fans and tourists. On Tuesday last week, the soccer pitch was up to 7m under water.
China has battled with summer floods for millennia, but some scientists said climate change is resulting in heavier and more frequent rain. Massive flooding could set off unforeseen “black swan” events with dire consequences such as dam collapses, Chinese officials said.
In southern China over the past two days, 13 major rivers in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Hainan were hit by storms and had risen above their warning levels, CCTV reported, quoting the ministry of water resources on Saturday.
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