[imagesource:befunky]

China’s rainy season has hit in a terrifying torrential fashion, with the country experiencing the worst flooding in history according to records dating back 140 years.

Storm Doksuri, a waning super typhoon, made its way over mainland China last Friday, and with it came intense flooding that has taken the lives of 30 people, with many more citizens reported missing and injured.

By Saturday, Baoding (about 150km outside of Beijing) had managed to evacuate 600,000 of the town’s 11.5 million residents.

The live stream below has allowed netizens the world over to look on in shock as highways become rivers and homes are destroyed:

Director of the Beijing-based NGO the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma Jun, has warned China that this kind of unexpected natural disaster is very much linked to growing climate change threats.

In addition to severe downpours this week, China has struggled recently with unusual heatwaves and extreme weather conditions.

“China has suffered unprecedented extreme heatwaves since last year… this year, there are record-breaking high temperatures in Northern China … These heatwaves are linked to global warming, and this is what most climate scientists around the world tend to agree,” Jun explained.

Footage of the dangerous scenes in China keeps rolling in, as many residents begin to express their fear and anger around the government’s lack of preparation for the typhoon’s impact.

It’s not like the Chinese government couldn’t predict this week’s weather madness. The country’s Ministry of Emergency Management recently released information showing that 142 of the deaths or disappearances recorded in China in July were caused by natural disasters such as landslides and flooding.

Our hearts go out to the regular citizens having to swim to safety – and it seems pretty obvious that China needs to relook at their preparedness for ongoing disasters such as this.

[source:news24]