Heavy rain killed more than 30 people and forced authorities to evacuate tens of thousands as swaths of northern China were lashed by torrential downpours that sparked landslides and flooding, state media said Tuesday.
Weather authorities have issued their second-highest rainstorm warning for the capital Beijing, neighbouring Hebei and Tianjin, as well as 10 other provinces, state news agency Xinhua said. The rains are expected to last into Wednesday, it added.
As of midnight Monday, the heavy rainstorms had left 30 people dead in Beijing, Xinhua said, citing the city’s municipal flood control headquarters.
More than 80,000 people have been evacuated in the Chinese capital alone, local state-run outlet Beijing Daily said on social media.
The death toll was highest in Miyun, a suburban district northeast of the city centre, it said.
“This time the rain was unusually heavy, it’s not normally like this,” a resident of Miyun, surnamed Jiang, told AFP as water streamed down the road outside her house. “The road is full of water so people aren’t going to work,” she said.
At a village called Xinanzhuang visited by AFP journalists, murky water submerged homes, cars and a road leading onto a highway.
A local man in his sixties said that he had never seen water levels so high.
Record floods
Nearby, spillways gushed with torrents of water leading out of the Miyun Reservoir, which authorities said has reached its highest levels since its construction in 1959.
Huairou district in the north of the city and Fangshan in the southwest were also badly affected, state media said.
Dozens of roads have been closed and over 130 villages have lost electricity, Beijing Daily said.
“Please pay attention to weather forecasts and warnings and do not go to risk areas unless necessary,” the outlet said.
More than 10,000 people also evacuated their homes in the neighbouring port city of Tianjin, which saw major flash floods, according to state-owned nationalist tabloid Global Times.
And in Hebei, which encircles the capital, a landslide in a village near the city of Chengde killed eight people, with four still missing, state broadcaster CCTV reported Tuesday.
On social media, users shared anxious accounts of being unable to reach family members who lived in Chengde’s mountainous Xinglong county.
Mudslides and floods forced more than 8,000 people to evacuate, while rescuers were still attempting to reach some villages that had “lost contact”, China National Radio said Tuesday.
Local authorities have issued flash flood warnings through Tuesday evening, with Chengde and surrounding areas under the highest alert, Hebei’s radio and television station said.
‘All-out efforts’
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged authorities late Monday to plan for worst-case scenarios and rush the relocation of residents of flood-threatened areas.
Beijing Daily said local officials had “made all-out efforts to search and rescue missing persons… and made every effort to reduce casualties”.
The government has allocated 350 million yuan ($49 million) for disaster relief in nine regions hit by heavy rains, state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday.
A separate 200 million yuan has been set aside for the capital, the broadcaster said.
In 2023, heavy rain killed more than 80 people across northern and northeastern China, including at least 29 people in Hebei where severe flooding destroyed homes and crops.
Some reports at the time suggested the province shouldered the burden of a government decision to divert the deluge away from Beijing.
Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heat.
China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say drive climate change and contribute to making extreme weather more frequent and intense.
But it is also a global renewable energy powerhouse that aims to make its massive economy carbon-neutral by 2060.
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