Power widely restored after major outages in Guangdong

Electricity has been restored to more than 80 percent of the households that suffered a blackout in Guangdong province as of Tuesday night, a statement released by Southern Power Grid said on Wednesday.

Some 388,000 households experienced power outages when catastrophic floods struck the province in the wake of heavy rainstorms since Saturday, the statement said. Many electrical supply facilities were destroyed or damaged.

The power company dispatched several thousand repair personnel, more than 1,000 vehicles and 34 emergency power generation vehicles to the affected areas to help repair facilities over several days.

Meanwhile, investigators were looking around the clock for hidden dangers.

In Meizhou, where floods hit the hardest, more than 100,000 households had regained electrical power as of Tuesday night, with about 73,000 remaining, the company said.

In Meizhou alone, Southern Power Grid logged 1,365 personnel visits, 124 drone visits, 564 repair vehicles, 24 emergency power generation vehicles and 100 emergency generators to help restore power supplies.

Thirty satellite telephones have also been allocated to support the relief work.

In another development, a villager from Bailing village in Pingyuan county of Meizhou was killed while he was helping evacuate local villagers on Monday morning.

Ma Ping died in a sudden landslide that buried the house in which he was leading a rescue team. They were entering local households to investigate safety hazards, evacuate residents and help clean up landslides.