Villagers in southern China are complaining of poor government support after the worst flash flooding in decades struck their homes, submerging roads, wiping out farms, and causing older buildings to collapse.
Guangdong provincial officials recorded over 24 inches of rainfall over five days beginning on August 2, which is nearly triple the normal precipitation for the entire month of August. Villages that have never before experienced heavy flooding found themselves underwater. At least seven deaths have been reported from flooding.
Residents of the Guangdong village of Pingtou complained to Reuters on Friday that they received little assistance from local officials, and no warnings from meteorologists.
“There was not even a bottle of mineral water provided to us,” said a villager who preferred not to disclose his full name.
More flooding was reported in the northwestern province of Gansu, where at least ten people were killed and 33 went missing. The mountainous terrain added some landslides to the woes faced by locals, bringing down power and telecom lines.
The central province of Henan canceled school and shut down roads in some communities due to heavy rains, prompting fears that the terrible floods of 2021 might be repeated. Those floods killed 292 people and forced over 200,000 more to flee their homes.
Fortunately, the heavy rains around Henan’s capital of Zhengzhou have yet to reach the incredible intensity of 2021, when eight months’ worth of rain fell in a single day.
The Chinese central government made ostentatious efforts to send belated disaster assistance to flood victims on Friday, with dictator Xi Jinping ordering “all-out” rescue efforts in the northwest.
“The top priority must be to make every possible effort to search for and rescue missing people, relocate and resettle people under threat, minimize casualties, and restore communications and transportation as quickly as possible,” said Xi.
The dictator chided local officials for “complacency and carelessness,” perhaps alluding to the complaints from residents about inadequate preparations for the floods.
Rescuers are focused on the mountain county of Yuzhong, an area that normally gets about 15 inches of rain a year but has been soaked with 7.7 inches since Thursday.
Yuzhong is located on the Loess Plateau southeast of the Gobi Desert — essentially the world’s largest deposit of silt running hundreds of feet deep in spots. The region is 150,000 square miles of landslides just waiting to happen.
Chinese state media broadcast footage of muddy water overwhelming roads while trees toppled out of the waterlogged silt.
Flood waters poured into Yuzhong quickly enough to wash parked cars away:
Australia’s ABC News noted that the floods are pushing large amounts of garbage onto city streets and pumping unsanitary “grey water” out of the sewers.
The Chinese central government on Friday announced $21.3 million in disaster relief for northwestern China, plus another $21.3 million for the southern province of Guangdong.
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