39 killed in southern China flooding after days of heavy rain

Officials in southern China said Thursday that the death toll from days of torrential rain and flooding has climbed to 39, as authorities in the country's east and in Taiwan separately braced for an approaching typhoon forecast to make landfall within days.

The bulk of the casualties occurred in the city of Hengzhou, where a dam holding back a reservoir partially gave way, unleashing a surge of water that tore through populated areas and killed 26 people, according to Ding Wei, deputy mayor of Nanning, the larger municipality that oversees the affected district.

Search efforts were continuing across the wider Guangxi region, where nine additional people remained unaccounted for as of Thursday, officials said. Rescue crews have been working through debris and flooded terrain in an effort to locate survivors, though hopes of finding them alive have been diminishing as the days pass.

The disaster traces back to Tropical Storm Maysak, which began dumping unprecedented volumes of rain over Guangxi on Saturday. The deluge overwhelmed multiple reservoirs, causing breaches that flooded surrounding communities and left residents trapped inside homes and other structures for several days before help could reach them.

The scale of the tragedy has grown sharply in a matter of days. As recently as Tuesday, the confirmed death toll stood at just six, meaning the official count has risen more than sixfold in roughly 48 hours as flooded areas became accessible and rescue teams could fully assess the damage.

Southern China has faced a string of severe weather events in recent years, with reservoirs and aging dam infrastructure repeatedly tested by intensifying rainfall linked to shifting storm patterns. Engineers and local officials have previously acknowledged that some flood-control structures in the region were not built to withstand the kind of extreme, sustained downpours now becoming more common, though it remains unclear whether that factor contributed to the failure in Hengzhou.

Attention is now turning eastward, where authorities along China's coastline and in Taiwan are preparing for a typhoon, reported to be Bavi, that forecasters expect to make landfall in the coming days. Evacuation planning, reinforcement of flood barriers and monitoring of reservoir levels are among the precautions likely to intensify as the storm approaches, given the toll already inflicted by Maysak just days earlier.

Beijing has not yet detailed what compensation or rebuilding assistance will be offered to families affected by the Hengzhou dam breach, and questions are likely to persist over how the reservoir failure was allowed to happen and whether earlier warnings were issued to residents downstream. Local and regional officials, including Ding, are expected to face continued scrutiny as the search for the missing continues and as the region turns its attention to the next storm system bearing down on the coast.

Source: CBS World