Name: China floods: Tens of thousands of people evacuated from Guangdong after heavy rain | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-04-26T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 3 min 11 s
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Now, let's turn to China, where days of heavy rains have swollen several major rivers in the south of the country, which are now threatening to flood, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Weather forecasters in Guangdong have called the situation grim.

The area is prone to flooding, but state media reports that water levels are at their highest for half a century.

Well, let's go live to our correspondent based in Beijing, Laura Bicker.

Well, officials have been monitoring those water levels overnight.

Now, what happened really was days and days of heavy rain, plus localized storms, which included large lumps of hail falling from the sky and even reports of a tornado.

Now, that has swollen what were once gentle rivers into fast-flowing torrents of water in some places.

Now, you mentioned there that state media had described the fear as a once-and-a-half-century event.

Now, after monitoring those water levels overnight, they feel, certainly at this stage, that that fear has gone away for now.

However, they are still watching as the rain falls and they are still monitoring those river levels.

They were dispatched early because this is one of the most populated provinces in China.

Around 60,000 people have been evacuated, taken to safer ground as those floodwaters continue to expand.

There were a number of rescue efforts that were unfolding on social media where water was coming underneath someone's car as he tried to get out.

Others showed these massive waterfalls coming into their villages.

There have been a number of landslides, which has cut off roads and major highways.

Schools are closed and electricity supplies have been disrupted.

So although the rain is beginning to stop for now and the water levels are going down, there's still a lot of work going on in Guangdong to solve some of the issues that this flooding has caused.

And what is the weather forecast looking like in the days ahead?

Because of course, you know, if more rain comes, this will exacerbate this already very challenging situation.

Well, it is looking like it's going to be a drier few days for Guangdong as this cleanup begins.

This is an area that's very prone to flooding.

They've already had one flooding event this month.

In fact, they say it's the earliest it's ever happened.

And I think when it comes to these kind of weather events, China is getting very used to dealing with climate related events.

Now, of course, some of these events are one off.

But many are being monitored to see if they are being caused by more climate change.

I think certainly the Climate Change Association here in China fears that these weather-related events will become more common as the years progress.