- Over 90 red alerts issued in China for high temperatures
- Shanghai issues red alerts, a rarity for the city
- Hot weather is beginning to return to central China
BEIJING, July 13 (Reuters) – Scorching heatwaves swept across China’s vast Yangtze River basin on Wednesday, battering densely populated megacities from Shanghai on the coast to Chengdu deep in the heartland.
More than 90 red alerts, the most serious in the three-tier warning system, were active in China as of 3:30 p.m. (0730 GMT. Most were in the Yangtze basin, which stretches nearly 2,000 km (1,200 miles).
Shanghai, China’s commercial capital, issued its second red alert in four days, warning of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Construction and other outdoor activities must be reduced or even halted on red alert, historically very rare for the city of 25 million.
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China is bracing for a summer of extreme conditions this year, from scorching heat to prolonged torrential rains. Cities south of the Yangtze in particular were hit by both intense heat and record rainfall.
“Summer in Nanjing has never been hotter than this year compared to previous years,” said a 77-year-old retiree in a city of more than 9 million near Shanghai.
— The sun is shining most of the day.
The hashtag #heatstroke was trending on social media with 2.45 million views on the Weibo platform on discussions ranging from admitting people to hospital to the harmful effects of long-term heat exposure.
Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, issued a record 51 red alerts in one day, with local media reporting that people were admitted to hospitals for heat stroke or even died from it.
“FOOD UTAR”
In Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province, a planned grid outage and upgrade this week coincided with warm weather that sparked loud protests from some of the 21 million residents on social media.
“It’s a large-scale blackout,” a netizen said on Weibo.
“Residents can’t get power guaranteed. Nobody is doing anything about it.”
In the city of Yangjin, also in southwestern China, temperatures reached 44 degrees Celsius on Monday, the highest since records began in 1959, state television reported late Tuesday.
Heatwaves have also started to return to central China after heavy rains interrupted a spell of hot weather.
In Henan province, train maintenance workers cleaned and checked air conditioners on trains that pass through the capital Zhengzhou, a transportation hub in central China.
Wang Mian, a train maintenance worker, said the highest temperature he experienced while on the roof of a train was 79 degrees Celsius.
“It’s very hot up here, it’s like a pot of steaming food,” Wang told state television.
“Our clothes are wet every day. Sometimes they never dry.”
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Reporting by Ryan Woo, Albee Zhang and Bernard Orr; Additional reporting from the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Louise Havens and Edwina Gibbs
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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