Guangzhou Tornado Disaster: Clean-up Begins
A tornado touched down in China’s Guangzhou city on Saturday, killing at least five and injuring 33 others. Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, China, is home to over 19 million people. China’s Xinhua news agency has reported extensive damage to office and factory buildings in the area, with over 141 buildings severely damaged.
Devastating Tornado hit the power lines in Guangzhou, China. pic.twitter.com/dG1uw3iytX
— Paul Serran (@paul_serran) April 29, 2024
A local weather station located 1.7 miles away from the epicentre of the tornado in Liangtian village, Baiyun District, registered a maximum wind speed of 20.6 metres per second. Chinese disaster management authorities classified the tornado as level three on the five-level intensity scale.
The agency reported that heavy rainfall in the region, combined with worsening climate change complications, contributed to the severe tornado that touched down in southern China. Several villages in the Baiyun district were also damaged by hail storms.
State media CGTN has reported that, as of 10 p.m. local time, search and rescue operations had ceased. Just a week prior to the tornado, the region had witnessed heavy rainfalls resulting in severe flooding in the Pearl River Delta that had claimed four lives.
Guangzhou suffered heavy damage due to the tornado
The Guangdong province, home to 127 million people and thousands of factories, has faced considerable setbacks due to the extreme weather conditions over the past few weeks. Since April 16, heavy downpours have resulted in the Pearl River Delta overflowing, causing deluges in surrounding low-lying areas.
Despite the Pearl River basin being prone to annual flooding, climate scientists have warned that the floods will become increasingly common as climate change worsens. Rescue organisations used rubber boats to evacuate as many as 110,000 people from the waterlogged areas to safety, state media reported.
The Chinese meteorological agency had also issued warnings of “heavy to very heavy rainfall’ continuing in parts of the Guangdong province (Shenzhen and Zhaoqing) till the end of the month.
In the aftermath of the devastating tornado in Guangzhou, Chinese state media shared multiple images of destroyed buildings and debris, littering the hardest-hit areas. Only a few buildings in the region survived the disaster unscathed. The sheet-metal roofs of several buildings were also ripped off by the tornado.
The aerial images of the area also showed an overturned truck on the street, with several vehicles crushed under piles of rubble. Many areas were left inaccessible and hindered search and rescue efforts, the Chinese disaster management officials have stated.
They also stated, “Temporary shelters have been set up in the region to accommodate displaced residents, with clean-up and relief efforts being carried out round the clock.”
Tornadoes are a rare occurrence in China, but not unusual. In September 2023, a tornado touched down in Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, killing 10 people.
Previously, in 2021, two tornadoes had stuck in the country’s Wuhan city, Hubei Province, and Shengze town, Jiangsu Province, killing 12 people and injuring 410 others.
Climate change behind the tornado in south China
Chinese climate scientists had mentioned the increasing trend of natural disasters like heatwaves, flooding, and thunderstorms in the coming days.
The country’s existing climate change mitigation policies have proven ineffective given the current scale of natural disasters being witnessed. Climate change is driven largely by human activities like fossil fuel burning, deforestation, and plastic pollution.
A powerful tornado covered the Chinese city of Guangzhou – The Global Times. With a population of over 14 million people, Guangzhou is the third largest city in China, behind only Beijing and Shanghai. The tornado covered two areas of the city. pic.twitter.com/Qb3aB7Duju
— Sergii Peleh (@PelehSergii) April 27, 2024
Rising global temperatures are causing shifts in weather patterns and further exacerbating the frequency and severity of natural disasters. The oceans are also being warmed, fuelling frequent hurricanes and thunderstorms.
The current natural disaster in China is one of the most visible impacts of climate change, in addition to the other extraordinary climate phenomena observed around the world in the past years (floods in Dubai, Russia, India, etc.).
