{"id":54409,"date":"2025-08-09T02:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T02:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/54409\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T02:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T02:50:07","slug":"chinese-villagers-hit-by-worst-floods-in-generations-say-they-had-no-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/54409\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese villagers hit by worst floods in generations say they had no warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

GUANGZHOU, China – The several hundred residents of Pingtou, a village in China\u2019s sub-tropical south, have seen plenty of typhoons and rainstorms over the years. But nothing prepared them for this week\u2019s flooding \u2013 the worst there in generations. <\/p>\n

Knee-deep brown water still covered the main road into the village, in Guangdong province, on Aug 8 as residents dragged damaged furniture and home appliances out of their homes, at least four of which collapsed in the downpour earlier this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe older folks here say that in the 100 years we\u2019ve been here, they\u2019ve never experienced such flooding,\u201d said one villager aged in his 50s who asked to use only his surname Zhong.<\/p>\n

Floodwaters have never before entered his two-storey house, but this time they surged in, wrecking many of his belongings. Water marks on the walls of nearby houses were more than 1m high.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if anyone had been killed in the village.<\/p>\n

A record 622.6mm of rain fell on Guangzhou, the provincial capital from Aug 2 to 6 \u2013 almost three times average monthly rainfall for the city in August. <\/p>\n

At least seven people were killed due to flooding there, state media said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

China has been battling with record rainfall<\/p>\n

<\/a> in its north and south as well as prolonged heatwaves in its interior.<\/p>\n

The government on Aug 7 announced 430 million yuan (S$77 million) in fresh funding for disaster relief, taking the total allocated since April to at least 5.8 billion yuan.<\/p>\n

But in Pingtou, villagers said they were not getting enough support from local authorities to deal with the aftermath.<\/p>\n

Mr Zhong said he was told by officials that there was no relief aid available to deal with the floods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was not even a bottle of mineral water provided to us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Across Guangdong, 75,000 people were evacuated as a precaution, but several residents of Pingtou told Reuters there had been no alerts about flooding in the area, leaving them ill-prepared.<\/p>\n

On the night of the heaviest downpour on Aug 5 in Pingtou, 73-year-old Zhang was woken up by her worried daughter-in-law in the middle of the night and rushed over to the relative safety of her son\u2019s two-storey home.<\/p>\n

When the family woke the next day, the roof of Ms Zhang\u2019s house had caved in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been living in that house for more than 50 years,\u201d said Ms Zhang, as she stared at her household items coated in the debris left by the receding waters.<\/p>\n

Just outside Pingtou, fish and duck farmer Hu Songlin said the deluge had swept away the fish in his ponds, estimating the immediate losses at about 120,000 yuan.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we won\u2019t be able to earn a single cent,\u201d his wife Hua said.<\/p>\n

Experts have linked China\u2019s erratic weather \u2013 including floods and droughts \u2013 to climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say that global warming can lead to heavier rainfall, but there\u2019s only so much water,\u201d said Dr Johnny Chan, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong\u2019s School of Energy and Environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if one area has more rain, another area will have less rain. So what we\u2019re seeing is that there will be places which are becoming wetter and there will be places which will become much drier.\u201d REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GUANGZHOU, China – The several hundred residents of Pingtou, a village in China\u2019s sub-tropical south, have seen plenty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-54409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}