China flood rescue teams battle rising waters as storms kill 25
Rescue crews waded and swam through floodwaters in central and southwest China as the death toll rose to at least 25, with more rain still forecast.
Rescue crews waded, swam and launched inflatable boats through floodwaters across central and southwest China as torrential rain pushed the death toll to at least 25 and turned towns into emergency zones. The storms shut schools, businesses and transport links, and left some residents cut off as water spread across roads, homes and power lines.
The hardest-hit belt stretched more than 1,000 kilometers, according to the China Meteorological Administration, with warnings covering Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan. Reuters reported that at least 21 people had been killed by Tuesday, then updated the toll to 25 on Wednesday as the rains continued and landslides and flash flooding worsened the damage.
In Dachong, in southern Guangdong, scooters sat submerged until only their handlebars showed above the water. Rescue teams used an inflatable boat to pull out a man who had climbed a tree to escape the rising floodwaters, a scene that captured how quickly normal urban movement had been overwhelmed.
In Hubei, emergency workers and military personnel carried senior citizens and other residents from flooded buildings, and some rescuers swam inside structures to reach people trapped behind doors. CCTV showed one man chest-deep in water as rescuers struggled for about an hour to get him to safety, a reminder that response teams were improvising with boats and swimmers because roads were no longer usable.
The flooding exposed the strain on China’s disaster-preparedness systems, especially in densely populated and economically important provinces where heavy rain can cascade into transport stoppages, school closures and power outages within hours. Chinese flood-control authorities activated Level-IV emergency response measures in Jiangxi, Guizhou and Guangxi, while state media later said tens of thousands of people were evacuated from flood-hit areas.
The crisis also fits a broader seasonal pattern. China’s summer monsoon marks the start of the country’s main flood season, and official warnings on Sunday said southern regions would face their strongest rainfall so far this year from May 27 to 29, with heightened risks as new precipitation returned to recently affected areas. With more heavy rain forecast, the immediate rescue effort is only one part of a larger test of whether local infrastructure, drainage systems and evacuation plans can keep pace with increasingly volatile weather.
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