Plucked From the Flood: Giant Drones Become Improvised Lifesavers in Guangxi

When the Skies Over Guangxi Turned Into a Rescue Line

In July 2026, Typhoon Maysak dumped torrential rain across China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, swelling rivers and swallowing entire roads and rooftops within hours. As floodwaters rose faster than ground vehicles could respond, rescue teams turned to an unlikely lifeline: giant cargo drones originally built for agricultural and industrial work.

In the hardest-hit Yunbiao Town, a drone rescue crew drove more than 1,700 kilometers and traveled 18 hours straight just to reach the disaster zone, where over 15,000 residents were stranded and roads were completely impassable. Once there, they deployed heavy-lift drones with wingspans exceeding three meters and the ability to carry up to 100 kilograms. Fitted with rescue ropes, the drones hovered above flooded rooftops, lowered lines to stranded residents, and lifted them to safety before ferrying them to nearby inflatable boats.

In a separate dramatic rescue captured on video by Chinese state media, a man trapped on top of a stranded oil tanker was strapped into a harness and carried away by drone as the churning floodwaters raged beneath him, clutching the support lines as he was pulled through the air to dry ground.

The footage, shared widely across Chinese social media, quickly went viral and reignited a public conversation about the role of drones in disaster response. Notably, DJI, the company behind much of China's civilian drone technology, has said its drones were never designed to airlift people. Yet in Guangxi, where roads had vanished underwater and every minute counted, these improvised rescues may have saved lives that traditional methods simply could not have reached in time.

It's a striking snapshot of how far drone technology has come. Less than two decades ago, when a major earthquake struck western China, rescuers were forced to send paratroopers on dangerous blind jumps into disaster zones just to assess the damage. Today, the same nation is lowering ropes from the sky to pull flood victims straight off their rooftops.