NANNING, CHINA — A public health and safety emergency is gripping southern China after torrential downpours triggered by the remnants of Typhoon Maysak caused multiple dam failures in the Nanning region, unleashing a wall of muddy water onto downstream communities.

Local emergency management committees raised the city’s flood-control response from Level III to Level I—the highest possible emergency status—after structural failures were confirmed at two major water conservancy facilities on Monday, July 6, 2026.

The primary disaster zone is concentrated in Hengzhou, a county-level city under Nanning's jurisdiction, where days of relentless, historic rain completely overwhelmed local water systems and resulted in cascading infrastructure failures.

At approximately 11:00 a.m. on Monday, critical structural cracks at the Liulan Reservoir culminated in a massive 50-meter (164-foot) breach along the concrete dam wall, sending hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water rushing into agricultural fields and residential sectors. Simultaneously, extreme water pressure forced an overtopping event at the neighboring Yunbiao Reservoir, resulting in a secondary dam breach.

Further north in Binyang County, the area's infrastructure faced a similar crisis when the Liuwang Reservoir overtopped after an extraordinary 713.3 mm (28.1 inches) of rain fell in a single 24-hour window—an accumulation that local weather experts describe as a rare 1-in-50-year event.

The regional government reported that four people have been confirmed dead across the wider Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region due to the severe weather system, with eight others still officially missing.

The dam collapses have directly affected roughly 55,000 residents. Overnight, an armada of state rescue teams, fire departments, and local volunteers mobilized into the disaster zones using inflatable rubber dinghies to pluck stranded homeowners from roofs and the upper stories of flooded structures. A total of 48,000 people have been successfully evacuated to emergency shelters.

The disaster has drawn an immediate response from China’s central government, which quickly released 100 million yuan ($13.8 million USD) in emergency aid to support local search, rescue, and displacement operations.

However, emergency crews are working against the clock. While meteorologists expect rain directly over the compromised reservoirs to temporarily ease, rivers across Nanning remain well above danger levels. Furthermore, emergency officials are keeping a nervous eye on the eastern coast, where the approaching Super Typhoon Bavi threatens to bring a whole new wave of severe weather to the country.