Footage screened on China Central Television shows a five-storey building in Tibet toppling into a river after heavy rains. Photo/Twitter
Heavy rain in Tibet has eroded the foundations of a five-storey apartment block, causing it to topple into a surging river. And the moment was caught on camera.
Tibet's Changdu City has been hard hit, with the local Ziqu River eroding its banks and bursting out over surrounding terrain at the weekend.
The river, held back in part by a bridge, gradually ate away the soil away beneath the yellow waterfront structure.
All occupants were evacuated long before the collapse, local media says.
A heavy red truck - also abandoned by its driver - also fell victim to the churning brown tide.
China Central Television says the region's heavy rains have washed away more than 57km of roads, damaged 24 bridges and cut power lines.
But the disaster is much larger in scope than the dramatic images indicate.
Floods and landslides have also killed scores of people in China's central Hunan province as two weeks of torrential rains forced 1.6 million to flee, authorities said yesterday.
Some 53,000 homes have collapsed while nearly 350,000 others were seriously or partially damaged after 11 straight days of rain, according to Tang Biyu, deputy director of Hunan's civil affairs department.
At least 63 people were killed by landslides, the flow of debris or the collapse of homes, while 20 more are missing, Tang said in a statement, which put the damage bill at $5.6 billion.
Central and southern China have been hit by a deluge since last month. Authorities in the southern region of Guangxi last week reported that two dozen people had been killed or gone missing due to flooding, which also damaged thousands of houses.
In late June, a massive landslide buried a village in southwest Sichuan province, killing at least 10 and leaving 73 more missing.
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