Nearly 900 snakes, including venomous cobras, escaped after a breeding farm in southern China was caught in floods triggered by Typhoon Maysak.One of the escaped reptiles bit a local villager, who was now receiving emergency treatment, officials said.The snakes slithered away when the farm in Hengzhou, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was inundated on Monday morning.Heavy rainfall caused a pair of reservoirs, called Liulan and Yunbiao, to breach their walls, inundating low-lying communities and washing away several small-scale snake farms in the area. A viral video showed villagers standing in waist-deep floodwaters with bamboo sticks trying to catch the reptiles.Village official Wu Zhi told state-owned Red Star News that most of the snakes weren’t venomous and that a team of 10 had been organised to capture them using fish nets and stun guns. He warned villagers not to try to catch snakes by hand if they found any in their homes. Authorities deployed emergency teams to capture the escaped reptiles, and warned residents to avoid flooded areas while recovery operations continued.Flooding in Hengzhou, Nanning, China (AP)Floods this week have killed dozens of people across multiple provinces in southern and central China and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Guangxi issued its highest flood alert at midnight on Monday as water levels at 70 monitoring stations on 55 rivers rose above the warning thresholds. By Tuesday afternoon, 62 rivers across the country had risen above flood-warning levels, with the Qingshui river in Guangxi recording the heaviest flood in its monitoring history. In neighbouring Guangdong, the first flooding red alert of the season was issued for parts of the West river in Zhaoqing.Maysak, China's first typhoon of the year, drove much of the destruction in the south, killing people in Guangxi and forcing 130,000 people to evacuate. A reservoir dam burst in the regional capital Nanning, with video showing a torrent of muddy water rushing past crumbled concrete walls. Thunderstorms and gale-force winds separately killed 11 people and injured more than 330 in the central province of Hubei.Chinese president Xi Jinping ordered "all-out" rescue and relief efforts, medical treatment for the injured and resettlement of displaced residents. "All local governments should tighten accountability for disaster prevention and relief, thoroughly check rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other regions prone to geological disasters, strengthen the early warning systems, ensure prevention and relief work and the safety of people's lives and property," he said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.China's flood season officially began on 1 July. Meteorologists warn the Asian country faces "complex" disaster prevention challenges this year due to the combined effects of global warming and El Niño, the natural climate phenomenon that periodically warms Pacific Ocean surface temperatures and disrupts weather patterns worldwide.