Deadly flooding hits Gansu
Torrential rain hit the eastern part of Gansu province between Thursday night and the wee hours of Friday, killing eight people and leaving two missing, the provincial government said on Friday.
A search for the missing was underway.
In Jingyuan county, two people were killed and one was missing when floodwaters pushed three cars off a road and into a riverbed that usually is dry at about 10 pm on Thursday.
In another part of the county some 80 kilometers away, a hotel was flooded, leaving six dead and one missing.
Local flood control authorities launched a levelfour emergency response, the lowest of a four-tier disaster response mechanism.
More than 200 people in five groups were sent to help with search and rescue duties, according to a statement from the provincial government. Local firefighters said they helped more than 30 villagers relocate to a safe place.
It is the second heavy rain and flood event in the province in the past month, following a torrential rainstorm in Dongxiang county that killed 12 and left four missing on July 18.
Since July, extensive rainstorms have continued throughout the province, although Gansu usually is dry in the summer. Storms that hit Gansu from July 9-11 were the heaviest in 57 years, the local meteorological department said.
Jingyuan county, on the southern edge of the Tengger Desert, had endured drought conditions since 2000, with annual precipitation of less than 200 milliliters on average.
Ai Wanxiu, an expert at the National Climate Center, said tropical high-pressure fronts had caused greater rainfall than normal in the northern parts of the country. “The precipitation in northern China was the strongest in July,” she said.
Gansu’s meteorological center has continuously issued yellow and orange alerts — respectively the second-lowest and secondhighest in a four-tier warning system for hazards like landslides — in the first nine days of August.
Rain is expected to continue until Monday, according to Lanzhou meteorological center.