Days of hard rain in southern China did more than swamp a few villages. When the walls of a snake breeding farm gave way, somewhere between 800 and 900 snakes poured out into the floodwater, including venomous cobras, and started swimming through the streets where people were already trapped. It sounds like a movie pitch nobody would greenlight because it feels too over the top. It actually happened, and there is video to prove it.
How the farm came apart
The whole thing traces back to the morning of July 6, in Dengxu village in the town of Yunbiao, part of Hengzhou City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Water rose fast, the facility’s walls collapsed, and the snakes were gone. Village committee head Wu Zhi gave the numbers to local media, putting the escape at 800 to 900 reptiles. He told reporters that most of them had been swept away by the current, with only a small number spotted clinging to floating trash and debris on the surface. So this wasn’t a neat little jailbreak. It was hundreds of animals scattered into moving water across a wide area, which is a nightmare to track.
The typhoon that started it all
The rain didn’t come out of nowhere. This was Typhoon Maysak, the country’s 10th typhoon of the year, which first hit land in the island province of Hainan before dumping days of rain on Guangxi. Flights were grounded, ferries stopped running, and reservoirs across the region got pushed to the edge. Maritime officials shut down 201 ferry crossings and hundreds of passenger routes. In Nanning, social media footage caught a dam structure buckling under the pressure of the water. When you get that much rain that fast, a low-lying snake farm sitting downstream from a reservoir is about the worst spot to be.
What kind of snakes got loose
Here is the part that separates a headache from a real emergency. The farm bred three main types: king ratsnakes, water snakes, and monocled cobras. The ratsnakes and water snakes are not venomous, and Wu Zhi made a point of saying a large chunk of the escapees were the harmless kind. The cobras are the problem. They are a species that can absolutely put someone in the hospital. A cobra was even filmed rising out of the murky water as villagers waded nearby. So while the odds favor grabbing a plain water snake, nobody out there wading through the flood could be sure what they were reaching for.
Nets, bamboo sticks, and stun guns
The response was scrappy, to put it mildly. Wu Zhi said a team of 10 was put together to round up the snakes using fish nets and stun guns. He also flat out warned villagers not to grab any snakes they found in their homes by hand, which is solid advice. But people didn’t exactly sit tight. Viral clips showed residents standing waist-deep in water, poking at snakes with bamboo sticks and trying to scoop them up with brooms and nets. In one video, two villagers tried to corner the snakes with bamboo while another prodded one caught in a broom. Nearby communities that weren’t underwater even formed their own volunteer snake-catching squads to help their neighbors.
Villagers stuck on rooftops
The scariest detail isn’t the snakes themselves. It’s that the people couldn’t get away from them. Roads were cut off, cell towers were knocked out, and folks were stranded on rooftops and upper floors with the water rising below them. One resident, Ms. Shen, said several of her neighbors had been bitten but were stuck and couldn’t reach a hospital. A local volunteer told a news outlet that relief supplies simply couldn’t get in because the water was too high and the rain wouldn’t stop. Authorities confirmed at least one person was getting emergency treatment for a snakebite. Being trapped in a small space with displaced animals is bad enough. Being trapped with no way to call for help makes it so much worse.
The reservoirs that broke
Two reservoirs are at the center of this: Liulan and Yunbiao. Around 11 a.m. on Monday, two sections of the dam at Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou gave way. Once those walls broke, the water tore straight into the low-lying communities downstream, and that’s where the small-scale snake farms were sitting. A snake farmer named Lei, whose own operation was on higher ground and came through fine, figured the farms in the low areas got hammered and that’s why so many snakes got out. Breaches and flooding were reported at multiple reservoirs across Hengzhou and Binyang county. The geography here really mattered. Higher ground meant your snakes stayed put. Lower ground meant they were gone.
The bigger death toll
As grabby as the snake story is, it’s part of a much larger disaster. At least 20 people died and 331 were injured in what’s being called one of China’s worst floods in recent memory. Eleven of those deaths came in Hubei province, where tornadoes, thunderstorms, and heavy winds hit on Monday night. Others died in the Nanning and Guangxi flooding. More than 130,000 residents in Guangxi were forced from their homes, and hundreds of thousands more had to evacuate elsewhere. The Qingshui River recorded its biggest flood on record, and central authorities said 62 rivers rose past flood warning levels. The snakes made great video. The rest of it is the real tragedy.
The government response
President Xi Jinping called for all-out rescue and relief efforts, pushing officials to prioritize evacuations, medical support, and better flood monitoring. The money moved too. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Emergency Management pre-allocated 160 million yuan, about 23.5 million dollars, in emergency disaster-relief funds for Guangxi and five other affected provinces. Roughly 150,000 units of essential supplies were sent to the flood zones. Guangxi issued its highest flood alert after water levels at 70 monitoring stations rose above the warning threshold, and officials upgraded the flood-control response for Nanning and Guigang to Level I, the most serious tier they have.
Will 900 snakes really stay loose?
Probably not, and here’s the strange silver lining. These are land-dwelling snakes, not sea creatures. Local herpetologists and farmers agree that snakes left in deep water for a long stretch tend to die. Farmer Lei said most of the farmed snakes would likely not survive prolonged submersion, and Wu Zhi noted the vast majority had already been carried off by the current rather than lurking around homes. So the mental image of 900 cobras permanently prowling the neighborhood isn’t accurate. The bigger short-term danger was the handful still clinging to floating debris right where trapped people were stuck. Notices went out telling residents to report any snake sightings to their village committee instead of trying to be a hero. That said, viral clips still drew comparisons to exotic snake releases from past storms, and the footage traveled around the world fast.
Why this one stuck
Floods, sadly, are common. What made this story spread was the collision of two things at once: a catastrophic flood and a wildlife emergency dropped right on top of it. Rescue teams weren’t just pulling people off rooftops. They were doing it while scanning the water for cobras. A resident in Shenzhen told reporters her brother’s family, including a 9-month-old baby, was stuck at home in the Qintang district. That’s the human piece behind the viral clips. The one villager confirmed hospitalized for a bite is the official count, though residents described more neighbors bitten and unable to reach care. For anyone watching from the States, it’s a reminder that a single storm can spin off a second disaster nobody planned for. And in this case, that second disaster had fangs.