At least six people have died after floods overwhelmed China’s Guizhou province.
The flooding has spread to other southwestern parts of the country, submerging towns and villages, ahead of a tropical depression.
Parts of neighbouring Guangxi province are half-submerged, with the township of Meilin worst hit, state media reported on Thursday. Floodwaters peaked at more than 4 metres (13ft) above what was considered safe.
Rongjiang and Congjiang in Guizhou province have already seen flooding, but now the wider region is on alert for potential road collapses, landslides and hydro-dam overflows.
On Tuesday, at least six people died when Rongjiang – a city of around 300,000 residents where three rivers meet – was hit by a flood on a scale that Chinese meteorologists said could only happen once in 50 years.
At one point, the flow rate in the River Liu was more than 80 times the average.
Displaced residents were forced to stay at local hotels, which were also hosting rescue personnel and reconstruction workers, according to Reuters.
As deluge-hit areas began to remove silt left behind by the flooding and restore power, water and phone lines – a tropical depression was expected to strike Guangxi on Thursday night. The storm risks a new round of flooding.
The tropical depression made landfall on China’s island province of Hainan early on Thursday, and later again in Guangdong on the mainland.
It brought further rain to a region still suffering after Typhoon Wutip two weeks ago.
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Extreme storms and severe flooding, which meteorologists link to climate change, increasingly pose major challenges for Chinese officials.
The storms threaten to overwhelm ageing flood defences, displace millions of people and cause billions of dollars in economic losses.
“Climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and unpredictable,” said Chen Xiaoguang, a professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, in Sichuan province.
“Rural areas face significant challenges due to limited infrastructure and resources,” he added.
