At least 20 people were murdered and 27 were reported missing as a result of severe rain in the Beijing region, according to the government’s report on Tuesday. Flooding also caused roads to be wrecked, trees to be uprooted, and electricity to be lost. Numerous thousands of people were relocated to shelters in Tianjin and Zhuozhou, two surrounding cities, as well as schools and other public facilities in suburban Beijing.
The Chinese capital was shocked by the extent of the water. Beijing typically has dry summers, but this year there was a period of extreme heat. Numerous people have died as a result of extremely severe summer floods in other regions, particularly the south of China. Other regions of the nation are experiencing drought.
In the Mentougou area on the western border of Beijing, automobiles were swept away by muddy water rushing down streets. “The cars that were parked on the street floated and got washed away,” a local, Liu Shuanbao, said. “A few parked cars behind my apartment building vanished in a flash.”
Residents had to wade through muck while emergency personnel cleared roadways with bulldozers on Tuesday. Another Mentougou resident, Wu Changpo, noted that neither the government nor the general public anticipated the rain to be that intense. “Villages were inundated and there were several landslides. Upon viewing these news, I sobbed again.
According to the official Xinhua News Agency, eleven fatalities were recorded in Beijing, and officials were hunting for 27 persons who had vanished. Hebei province, which is located outside of the capital, reported nine fatalities.
According to Phoenix TV’s website, the Fangshan neighborhood of the city lost power to almost 60,000 residences. Around 125,000 people from high-risk locations were relocated to shelters in Zhuozhou, southwest of Beijing, according to Xinhua.
Local governments have been given the go-ahead go “all out” in order to rescue individuals who are stranded and reduce casualties and property damage, according to President Xi Jinping. 35,000 people were reportedly evacuated from the area around the flooded Yongding River, according to the administration of Tianjin, a port city east of Beijing.
According to the Hebei provincial meteorological bureau, rainfall in certain areas has reached 500 millimeters (nearly 20 inches) since Saturday. Rainfall rates of up to 90 millimeters (3 1/2 inches) per hour were recorded in certain places.
According to the Ministry of Water Resources, 13 rivers in the Haihe Basin, which encompasses Beijing, Tianjin, and Shijiazhuang, surpassed alert limits. It said, citing emergency personnel, that over 42,000 people had been evacuated from parts of Shanxi province to the west of Hebei.
Early in July, floods in Chongqing’s southwest area claimed the lives of at least 15 people, while Liaoning’s far northwest province, which is home to 5,590 people, required an evacuation. Residents in the Hubei province in central China were confined to their houses and cars by downpours.
In 1998, China saw its worst and most damaging floods in recent memory, killing 4,150 people, the majority of whom were located around the Yangtze River.
In the central province of Henan in 2021, floods claimed the lives of almost 300 individuals. On July 20 of that year, a record amount of rain swamped the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, turning the streets into raging rivers and drowning at least a portion of a subway line.
