Police officers make their way through floodwaters in Hong Kong yesterday. Heavy rains unleashed flooding and landslides yesterday in Hong Kong, shutting down roads and air traffic, officials said.

Rare torrential rain blackened the sky and lashed Hong Kong yesterday morning, forcing the closure of schools and hospitals, submerging vehicles and widely disrupting traffic in the city.

The Hong Kong Observatory issued an amber rainstorm warning signal about 5:15am yesterday and upgraded it at 6:40am to the highest black rainstorm warning signal, under which rainfall exceeds 70 millimeters per hour.

The torrential rains submerged roads in many areas and pedestrians were forced to wade through knee-deep water. Firefighters were called to help out stranded passengers and drivers at Wong Nai Chung Road near Happy Valley.

A highway linking Kowloon to the Hong Kong International Airport was also cut off by inundation of the roadbed, and a landslide was reported near Tung Chung.

Hong Kong Airport Authority said a total of 151 flights arriving in or leaving the city had been delayed by yesterday noon due to the bad weather and lightning.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government said they had reports of seven landslides in different areas and 31 cases of inundation. Two people were reported to be trapped in a grocery store by a landslide and rescue efforts by firefighters were still under way yesterday afternoon.

About 100 villagers threatened by landslide warnings near Mei Foo railway station had to be evacuated.

The Home Affairs Department opened its emergency co-ordination centers to provide shelter for those in need of temporary accommodation following a landslide warning signal issued by the Hong Kong Observatory.

The Education Bureau also announced it had suspend classes of all morning and whole-day schools due to the black rainstorm warning, which also led to the closure of courts, tribunals, court registries and offices.

The Hospital Authority closed its general outpatient clinics, specialist clinics and psychiatric day hospitals, and many tourism spots had to close down temporarily.

Hong Kong Disneyland, one of the city's major attractions, also announced in a press release that the park was to close "for the sake of tourists' safety" and would re-open with limited operations if the black rainstorm warning signal was canceled.

Meanwhile, three students went missing and thousands of people were relocated as rainstorms hit southern China's Guangdong Province on Friday and yesterday, the provincial flood control headquarters said.

The missing persons were a high school student in Zhuhai who was swept away by floodwater in a canal, and two pupils from Maoming.

The cities of Yangjiang and Jiangmen saw their worst rainstorms in five decades, a headquarters spokesman said, and more than 2,000 people were relocated in Zhuhai and Jiangmen.

(Xinhua News Agency June 8, 2008)