Over 80,000 people flee severe flooding in southwest China

Shanghai: Flooding in China s southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said on Wednesday, as a collapsed bridge forc...

Shanghai: Flooding in China's southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said on Wednesday, as a collapsed bridge forced the dramatic rescue of a truck driver left dangling over the edge.

China is enduring a summer of extremes, with heat waves scorching wide swaths of the country while rainstorms pummel other regions.

Climate change -- which scientists say is exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions -- is making such weather more frequent and more intense.

Around 80,900 people had been evacuated by Tuesday afternoon in the southwestern province of Guizhou, state news agency Xinhua reported.

"It's very bad this time," Xiong Xin, a member of a rescue team who was in Rongjiang county on Tuesday, told AFP, describing the flooding as a "once-in-50-year event".