Beijing: Heavy rainstorms have lashed China's Chongqing Municipality and Guizhou province since Sunday, said local authorities on Monday. China's government says torrential rains caused landslides, knocked out power and damaged houses. On Sunday the Henan province issued red alerts of torrential rains for multiple regions, the strongest indicator on China's four-colour scale, forecasting more than 100mm within three hours.
From 8 a.m. Sunday to 8 a.m. Monday, rainstorms hit 26 districts and counties in Chongqing with precipitation up to 188 mm, said Chongqing hydrological monitoring station. The water levels in 33 local rivers rose by one to four meters, Xinhua news agency quoted the station as saying.
A total of seven counties in Guizhou province experienced rainstorms with precipitation up to 145.5 mm from 7 a.m. Sunday to 7 a.m. Monday, according to Guizhou meteorological bureau.
The bureau launched a level-IV emergency response to rainstorms and issued an alert for flash floods with the provincial water resources department.
Meanwhile, the flood control and drought relief headquarters of Chongqing also issued warning and launched an emergency response to the floods, since rainstorms were forecast to continue in the municipality from Monday to Tuesday.
The The torrential rain in July had affected about three million people in Henan province and a total of 376,000 local residents have been relocated to safe places, the provincial emergency management department said.
Rainwater has damaged more than 215,200 hectares of crops, causing a direct economic loss of about 1.22 billion yuan (about USD 188.6 million), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The massive floods, described by meteorologists as a once-in-a-lifetime event, has resulted in apocalyptic scenes in Henan and its provincial capital Zhengzhou, a metropolis of 12.6 million, with its public avenues and subway tunnels getting submerged with surging waters.
