Cleanup operations underway as death toll from China floods hits 39

The death toll from devastating floods in southern China’s Guangxi region rose to 39 on Thursday, with nine people still missing, state media reported, as residents went about cleaning up.

Extreme weather has wreaked havoc on southern and central China this week, bringing torrential rain and severe flooding to Guangxi, with a super typhoon heading towards eastern provinces this weekend.

Twenty-six deaths were linked to a dam breach at Liulan Reservoir, with seven still missing there, state news agency Xinhua reported.

On Thursday there were road blocks on the way to Liulan, AFP reporters saw.

Coaches filled with volunteers and the Chinese People’s Militia — a reserve army force of civilians — were travelling towards the village.

See also: Rescuers search for missing in China storms after 100,000 evacuated

Liulan was not the only reservoir that burst, locals told AFP Thursday — another smaller one near the town of Gantang also collapsed.

A man who gave his surname as Huang said they initially hadn’t realised the severity of the situation, as “never in history had it ever been this bad”.

“We never received any warning. If we had received a warning, our losses would have been much less,” he added.

He said even items on the second floor of his house had been destroyed.

“In several hundred years, this is the first time the water has reached the second floor… Never before in history,” said another resident, Bi Yunchun.

Clean-up continues

On Wednesday when AFP visited Liulan, floodwaters had receded, but the streets and houses were swamped with thick mud.

Residents in Liulan were also seen cleaning up their devastated homes, with some of them using excavators to scoop up their damaged household items, AFP correspondents saw.

Water from the reservoir was still rushing through the river as a rescue team sent large drones carrying food and supplies to people trapped on the other side.

Six hundred residents from the village of Dutian, located next to the reservoir, were safely sheltering but were cut off from the rest of the area, state broadcaster CCTV said Thursday.

Houses in Dutian were directly hit by the flood surge, with some reduced to their foundations.

Many residents had been able to evacuate in time following an alert issued by the authorities, according to CCTV.

The flood chaos in Guangxi has not been limited to humans.

The region’s Guigang Zoo asked the public for help on Wednesday to find at least 100 animals that had escaped after their enclosures were damaged, including alpacas, miniature pigs, and zebras.

Earlier this week, the head of a local village committee told Chinese media that around 800 to 900 snakes escaped after a breeding farm was washed away in Hengzhou city.

Just as residents were beginning to clean up the flood damage, Super Typhoon Bavi bore down on eastern China, threatening more rain.

Bavi is expected to make landfall or bypass Taiwan on Saturday before hitting the coast of China’s Fujian and Zhejiang provinces that evening, state media reported.

“After landfall, it will continue to move northwest and gradually weaken,” state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing the National Meteorological Center.

Bavi has a diameter of over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles), it added, and will bring “heavy to torrential rain over the next three days” in north and northeastern China.