Torrential rain in Chongqing kills nine, 11 still missing

Torrential rain in southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality has left nine people dead and 11 missing, turning a fast-moving flood emergency into a broader test of how one of the country’s largest urban regions responds when extreme weather overwhelms roads, hillsides and drainage systems at once.

State broadcaster CCTV said the toll had risen by Monday after three deaths were already confirmed on Sunday. The heaviest damage centered on Yongchuan District, where state media said rainfall was record-breaking and triggered flash floods, landslides and mudslides. Anxi Village was identified as one of the worst-hit areas, with rescue workers carrying out search-and-rescue operations there as authorities tried to account for the missing.

The scale of the response widened quickly. Chongqing authorities placed Yongchuan under a Level I flood-control emergency response, the highest alert level, while 29 other districts and counties were raised to Level II. Chinese state media said a central government work team was dispatched to the municipality to help with response efforts, underscoring the seriousness of a disaster that is still evolving across both dense neighborhoods and more isolated settlements.

Earlier reports on May 24 had put the number of missing in Yongchuan at 17, with two more people unaccounted for in Beibei District, showing how quickly the situation deteriorated as officials gathered information from damaged communities. The changing figures point to the difficulty of reaching flooded villages, assessing landslide damage and confirming casualties in terrain where sudden downpours can cut off entire areas in minutes.

The disaster also fits a pattern that has repeatedly challenged Chongqing. Reuters reported that a separate rain disaster in the municipality killed 15 people in July 2023, a reminder that the region’s steep geography and river-cut valleys can magnify the danger from intense rainfall. For Chongqing, the immediate priority remains the search for the missing, but the wider question is whether warning systems, evacuations and flood defenses are keeping pace with the increasingly severe weather now striking the city and its surrounding districts.