Heavy downpours lash south China's Guangxi, flooding roads, triggering landslides, trapping residents

Heavy downpours have lashed several areas in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region over the past few days, flooding roads, triggering landslides and trapping residents there.

The mountainous Napo County in Baise City experienced multiple landslides triggered by heavy rainfall on Saturday morning which damaged roads and disrupted traffic. The local road maintenance center immediately organized repair work. As of 17:00, two sections of the damaged roads reopened to traffic with a limited traffic flow.

Sudden rainstorms caused water-logging on Saturday in the downtown area of Beihai City. As the national college entrance examination is underway, municipal workers responded immediately with drainage pumps to clear roads around the examination sites to facilitate students' travel and ensure that no one was stranded.

In Lingshan County of Qinzhou City, 13 people including seven children were trapped in a two-storey house surrounded by waist-deep floods following the torrential rain on Friday night. Upon receiving the call for help, rescuers rushed to the site to bring those trapped out of the flooded building successively with ropes, a ladder and life jackets. There were transferred to a safe place via rubber boats. All the trapped had been evacuated as of 2:00 on Saturday, with no causalities reported.

Heavy downpours lash south China's Guangxi, flooding roads, triggering landslides, trapping residents

The ports along the trunk stream of the Yangtze River, China's longest and the world's third-longest river, are expected to handle a record 4.02 billion tons of cargo in 2024, an official from the administration of navigational affairs on the river under the Ministry of Transport said at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday.

Such figure marks a 3.9-percent year-on-year growth which cements the Yangtze River's position as the busiest inland waterway in the world, the official said.

The Yangtze River now boasts 16 major ports, each with an annual cargo throughput exceeding 100 million tons.

The record has effectively demonstrated the strong resilience and market vitality of the Yangtze River shipping, with policies strongly supporting the development of multi modal transportation.

The government's efforts have led to a significant increase in the proportion of road-to-water and rail-water multi modal transport, greatly reducing the logistics costs for enterprises, the official said.

The record cargo throughput on the Yangtze River highlights China's economic resilience and the success of its policies in promoting efficient and cost-effective transportation solutions along this vital inland waterway.

Yangtze River cargo throughput to surpass 4 billion tons