Torrential rains displace thousands from homes

Summer downpours cause flooding, economic losses in parts of country

Heavy floods triggered by torrential rains have displaced thousands of people across the country as Beijing and areas nearby experienced a brief respite from recent scorching temperatures.

The country may continue to simultaneously suffer floods and sweltering heat waves this month, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.

Downpours have battered parts of Hunan province since Thursday, with the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture one of the worst-hit areas, according to the province's flood and drought control headquarters.

Over 95,000 people in the prefecture have been affected, and more than 14,000 of them were relocated or evacuated, local authorities said on Sunday. Direct economic losses are estimated to be around 575 million yuan ($79.5 million).

"The rain was so heavy that the water level rose by over 1 meter within about 10 minutes," Luo Jiashun, a resident of Mengke village in the prefecture's Baojing county, recalled about the time when the rain started to pour down on Friday, triggering floods that left the lowlying village isolated.

Forty-four houses in the village were swamped, over 50 hectares of farmland were inundated and 163 residents were evacuated. Local authorities are still trying to restore water and power supplies to help get village life back to normal.

Shortly before 1 pm on Tuesday, the Xiangxi meteorological station issued a yellow alert for heavy rainfall, warning of maximum hourly precipitation of 24 millimeters from noon to 6 pm in Fenghuang county. The alert was soon upgraded to orange, as the latest forecast showed that the largest hourly precipitation from 1 pm to 4 pm may reach 36 mm.

China has a four-tier, color-coded weather alert system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

Local observatories in at least four counties in the prefecture also issued yellow or orange alerts for downpours on Tuesday afternoon.

In Zhenba county, Shaanxi province, downpours from 6 pm Sunday to 6 pm Monday forced the evacuation of more than 7,800 people, according to the emergency services bureau of Hanzhong city, where the county is located.

The bureau said workers are still laboring round the clock to clear 80 roads cut by floods and restore power supply to affected areas. Luckily, the rain subsided in the county on Tuesday.

In Sichuan province, local authorities have evacuated more than 85,300 people as of 7 am on Tuesday to avoid potential dangers from a downpour forecast to strike vast stretches from Monday to Tuesday.

The rain was expected to affect five prefecture-level cities, including Guang'an, Luzhou and Panzhihua, and parts of Yibin city and Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, bringing a maximum precipitation of 100 to 120 mm, Sichuan meteorological station said.