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China's North and West on Alert after Deadly Floods Caused by Sweeping Rains

China's west and north were bracing for flash floods on Thursday, as the annual "Plum Rains" left a path of destruction. This prompted thousands of rescue workers from across China to help pull people out of floodwaters.

The red alerts traced the rains from the southwest province of Sichuan, through the northwestern provinces of Gansu and Liaoning to the northeastern region of the province.

On Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, some Beijing-bound trains had been suspended.

Meteorologists have linked climate change to extreme rainfall and severe floods. These events pose a major challenge to policymakers, as they threaten to overwhelm the ageing flood defences and displace millions of people, and wreck havoc on China’s $2.8 trillion agriculture sector.

Natural disasters caused economic losses of over $10 billion in July last year, which is when the "Plum Rains" - so named because they coincide with plums maturing along China's Yangtze River at the time of the East Asia Monsoon – usually reach their peak.

The state media reported that over 1,000 rescue workers had been dispatched on Wednesday to the town Taiping, in central China's Henan Province, after torrential rainfall caused a river nearby to burst it banks. Five people were killed in a flash flooding and three others are still missing.

A separate report by state media said that two more people were killed in a landslide in the province of Gansu caused by heavy rainfall on Wednesday and Thursday.

During a visit of two days to Hebei province, which borders Henan in the north, Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing urged officials to increase efforts to minimize casualties ahead of heavy rains by preemptively evacuating residents, according to a report from Xinhua, a state news agency.

Scientists say that while China has a national severe weather monitoring system and a forecasting system for it, very localised forecasts remain a challenge. They test the ability of rural communities, with less forecasting resources, to evacuate their local population quickly before any extreme weather.

Local media reported that in China's Guangxi province, further south, several buildings have slid off hillsides in the past two days, after their foundations gave in to waterlogged soil.

Video footage verified by shows a five storey building in Xinzhou, China collapsing within seconds into a river nearby as the ground underneath it suddenly gave way.

A separate report in local media cited the Ministry of Water Resources to say that between June 30 and 1 July, the Lengshui River, which runs through Xinzhou, experienced its worst floods since records began. The report also provided readers with information on how to recognize early signs of flooding.

Other local media reported that in Pingliu Village (about 80 km west of Xinzhou), 21 people from 7 households were evacuated after a landslide damaged and destroyed four houses.

The national meteorological center forecasts scorching heat along eastern coast of the country.

(source: Reuters)