BEIJING – After days of relentless torrential rainfall driven by Tropical Cyclone Saudel, catastrophic weather has left two people dead and 10 others unaccounted for following a devastating mudslide that struck a rural village in eastern China, state media confirmed Sunday. The disaster also destroyed at least 12 residential properties, leaving local communities reeling from sudden destruction.
The mudslide barreled through a section of a village in Jiangxi Province’s Suichuan County in the early hours of Saturday. In immediate response, emergency rescue teams were dispatched to the impacted site within hours, while local authorities ordered the evacuation of nearby residents to elevated, safe terrain to mitigate the risk of additional geologic disasters. Official statements note that one victim was pulled dead from the debris, while two other trapped residents were extracted alive and have since been reported to be in stable, good health.
By Sunday morning, search teams recovered the body of one additional missing person trapped beneath the wreckage of collapsed homes, according to China’s state-run national broadcaster CCTV.
The track of Typhoon Saudel has brought repeated impacts to southeastern China’s coastal regions. Official news agency Xinhua reports that the storm made its first two landfalls along the coast of Zhejiang Province on August 28, before weakening to a tropical storm and making a third landfall in neighboring Fujian Province this past Thursday. Both Zhejiang and Fujian share a border with Jiangxi, allowing the storm’s residual rain bands to dump heavy precipitation inland across the region.
Even in Fujian, which bore the brunt of the storm’s third landfall, damage has been extensive. Xinhua reported Friday that multiple local residents remain missing after days of continuous downpours. While the exact count of missing people in the area has not been confirmed, local records confirm that more than 100 houses have collapsed in Huating Town, located in Putian City. The storm also triggered a levee overtopping and subsequent breach Thursday afternoon, sending floodwaters surging into low-lying villages and trapping dozens of residents in their homes.
As of Friday night, local Fujian authorities have successfully evacuated roughly 600,000 residents from high-risk areas, including low-lying coastal zones and regions prone to flash floods and landslides. Footage broadcast by CCTV shows widespread urban flooding, with major city streets transformed into rushing muddy rivers that forced emergency responders to deploy inflatable rafts and boats to navigate submerged neighborhoods and reach stranded residents.
The cascade of disasters underscores the ongoing risk of extreme weather events in southern China during the annual typhoon season, with slow-moving systems dumping record rainfall that overwhelms local infrastructure and triggers deadly geologic hazards in hilly inland regions.