BEIJING, July 6 (Reuters) – Nanning, capital of China’s southwestern Guangxi region, raised its flood control response to the highest level as rivers and reservoirs swelled with the passage of Typhoon Maysak, Chinese state media said on Monday.
Now a slower-moving tropical storm, Maysak no longer has the winds of more than 50 miles per hour (80.5 kph) that lashed Vietnam and China’s southern island province of Hainan over the weekend. But as the storm heads inland and weakens, it will dump the water it sucked up on its way across the South China Sea, triggering catastrophic flooding, Chinese meteorologists say.
Authorities in Nanning, a city of nearly 9 million people, raised the flood control emergency response level to I from III due to “extremely heavy rain”, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
So far, one breach has been reported at a medium-sized reservoir in Nanning’s Hengzhou, and people in the area were being evacuated, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities.
Some 170 miles (273.6 km) away in the city of Guigang, floodwaters turned a wide road into a lake, submerging cars and cascading in brown torrents down a hill into a building site, a video posted on the Chinese social media platform Douyin and verified by Reuters showed.
The water level at Guigang Hydrological Station had risen to 42 metres by 12:30 p.m. (04:30 GMT), the Ministry of Water Resources said in a statement.
Further south in Fangchenggang, another verified video showed a small car being washed down a street. In the same footage, the water rose to the level of another car’s steering wheel, and a man could be seen struggling to keep his electric scooter from being swept away.
EXTREME WEATHER RISKS
China, the world’s second-largest economy, faces growing threats from extreme weather, which meteorologists link to climate change. Analysts say weather-related risks each year stand to wipe out tens of billions of dollars worth of commercial activity, as cities flood, industrial activity stalls, and crops are submerged or washed away.
Maysak made landfall in the southern island province of Hainan on Friday, the first tropical cyclone to reach the Chinese mainland this year. The storm made its second landfall on Sunday in Vietnam, which shares a border with Guangxi.
In the Vietnamese border town of Mong Cai, the storm brought down trees and ripped metal roofs from buildings, state media reported, as it made its way into China.
Heavy rainfall is expected across Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and other areas in the coming days, according to Chinese meteorologists. The three provinces alone are home to over 150 million people — more than the population of Russia.
The region is also on alert for Super Typhoon Bavi, which is making its way across the Pacific Ocean towards Taiwan. The U.S. National Weather Service said it was packing winds of up to 180 miles per hour as it made its way across Guam, Tinian, Saipan and Rota on Monday.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Joe Cash; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Kate Mayberry)
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