China’s Nanning on top alert as Typhoon Maysak triggers catastrophic flooding
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Flooding in Pingshan village in Nanning’s Hengzhou after heavy rainfall brought by Typhoon Maysak on July 6.
PHOTO: REUTERS
BEIJING – Nanning, the capital of China’s south-western Guangxi region, raised its flood-control response to the highest level as rivers and reservoirs swelled with the passage of Typhoon Maysak, Chinese state media said on July 6.
Now a slower-moving tropical storm, Maysak no longer has winds of more than 80.5kmh that lashed Vietnam and China’s southern island province of Hainan over the weekend.
But as the storm heads inland and weakens, it will dump the water it sucked up on its way across the South China Sea, triggering catastrophic flooding, Chinese meteorologists say.
The authorities in Nanning, a city of nearly nine million people, raised the flood-control emergency response level to I from III due to “extremely heavy rain”, China Central Television reported.
So far, one breach has been reported at a medium-sized reservoir in Nanning’s Hengzhou, and people in the area were being evacuated, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the local authorities.
About 273.6km away in the city of Guigang, flood waters turned a wide road into a lake, submerging cars and cascading in brown torrents down a hill into a building site, a video posted on Chinese social media platform Douyin and verified by Reuters showed.
The water level at the Guigang Hydrological Station had risen to 42m by 12.30pm local time, the Ministry of Water Resources said in a statement.
Further south in Fangchenggang, another verified video showed a small car being washed down a street. In the same footage, the water rose to the level of another car’s steering wheel, and a man could be seen struggling to keep his electric scooter from being swept away.
Scooters toppling over due to heavy rainfall following Typhoon Maysak in Fangchenggang in China’s Guangxi region on July 4.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Extreme weather risks
China, the world’s second-largest economy, faces growing threats from extreme weather, which meteorologists link to climate change.
Analysts say weather-related risks each year stand to wipe out tens of billions of dollars worth of commercial activity, as cities flood, industrial activity stalls and crops are submerged or washed away.
Maysak made landfall in the southern island province of Hainan on July 3, the first tropical cyclone to reach the Chinese mainland in 2026. The storm made its second landfall on July 5 in Vietnam, which shares a border with Guangxi.
In the Vietnamese border town of Mong Cai, the storm brought down trees and ripped metal roofs from buildings, state media reported, as it made its way into China.
Heavy rainfall is expected across Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and other areas in the coming days, according to Chinese meteorologists. The three provinces alone are home to more than 150 million people – more than the population of Russia.
The region is also on alert for Super Typhoon Bavi, which is making its way across the Pacific Ocean towards Taiwan. The US National Weather Service said it was packing winds of up to 290kmh as it made its way across Guam, Tinian, Saipan and Rota on July 6. REUTERS
