Rains bring flooding to northern China, Yangtze

Heavy rainfall due to cold vortex; safety measures to be strengthened

Heavy rains are expected to continue causing floods along small rivers in China's Yangtze River region after the country triggered its emergency response on June 21, water resources departments and meteorological services said.

The downpours that began to affect the Yangtze River region, southwestern and southern China on Saturday will continue until Monday, according to the National Meteorological Center.

On Friday, meteorological services in Wuhan, Hubei province, issued the highest-level red alert for heavy rains and the Xinjiang River Hydrology and Water Resources Monitoring Center in Jiangxi province issued a yellow alert for floods, the second lowest level of its four-tier system. Meteorological services in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region warned of potential disasters and flooding along small rivers due to heavy rain, hail and strong winds.

The rains are likely to cause the Yangtze River and rivers leading from the Poyang, Dongting and Taihu lakes to swell visibly, the Ministry of Water Resources said.

Flood prevention has been beefed up. The ministry has sent 10 working groups as of June 30 to Heilongjiang province, North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, East China's Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces, Southwest China's Guizhou and Yunnan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

By Thursday, the Jiangxi government had evacuated 54,000 people from a number of cities to locations safe from rising waters, local media reported.