Beijing : Rescue crews raced on Wednesday to clear debris and flooded roads as southern China braced for more extreme rainfall and spreading infection after some of the worst downpours this century, brought by a peak in East Asian monsoon rains.
Forecasters warned of more thunderstorms after the century’s second-heaviest August rains pounded Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, forcing its Baiyun airport, one of the world’s busiest, to cancel 363 flights and delay 311.
The day before, the skies above Hong Kong and the high-tech cities of China’s Pearl River Delta turned livid and dumped the heaviest August rainfall since 1884 on the Asian financial hub.
Rescue teams in Guangdong scrambled to open drains and pump water away from urban areas, state media said, as the intense rain set off mudslides and felled trees on highways, ripping up roads to expose cabling and other infrastructure.
Video images showed roads transformed into brown waterways, threatening to worsen a major outbreak of chikungunya, fuelled by mosquitoes thriving in stagnant flood water, which had been on a downtrend before the latest rains.
China has suffered weeks of atmospheric chaos since July, battered by heavier-than-usual downpours with the East Asian monsoon stalling over its north and south.
Weather experts link the shifting pattern to climate change, testing officials as flash floods displace thousands and threaten billions of dollars in economic losses.
On Tuesday, Beijing allocated more than 1 billion yuan ($139 million) in disaster relief for Guangdong and the northern province of Hebei, as well as the capital, Beijing, and the northern region of Inner Mongolia, state news agency Xinhua said, including subsidies for damage to grain-growing areas.
The next few weeks are especially daunting for disease prevention and control, say provincial authorities, after the flood season, worsened by typhoons and heavy rain, boosted mosquito activity.
