There are heavy rainy days At least 30 people have been killed in Beijing’s northern suburbs, state media reported Tuesday. China reportedly tackles yet another deadly rainy season characterized by extreme downpours, catastrophic floods and landslides.
Recently, severe storms have hit much of northern China. This is a dense section of a large metropolitan city and agricultural centre, a dense section of a home.
There, residents and their livelihoods have become increasingly vulnerable to worsening summer storms and flooding, as well as worsening heat waves and droughts. As the climate crisis causes extreme weather to get more frequent and more intense, it poses a major challenge for the Chinese government.
The thrilling rain escalated around China’s capital on Monday, killing 28 people in Miyun. Two more people were killed in Yangkin, reported by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Footage circulating on social media shows brown floods cleaning residential communities, washing cars, knocking down electric poles and turning the streets towards Miyoon’s river.
It could complicate rescue operations, with dozens of roads being damaged in more than 100 small, rural villages, and downpours also blocking electricity.
More than 80,000 people have moved, including around 17,000 from Miyun.
Some residents have explained the horrors they have on social media. A woman from Miyun’s small town wrote on Chinese Instagram Xiaohongshu that she was filled with a “feeling of fear” on Monday night, with nearby rivers overflowing and erupting with trees, vehicles and construction debris.
“The place I grew up was destroyed overnight, and I never imagined that such devastation would occur within the capital,” she wrote.
Firefighters arrived Tuesday morning for rescue, and the communications team was still trying to retrieve telephone signals from remote locations, she said.
Some residents support Using boats and excavators, rescue efforts will be made to evacuate people trapped in the flood. A local man rescued 17 people on a boat, and another man used an excavator to safely move over 80 people, A Miyun resident told CCTV.
Authorities have discharged flood waters from Miyun’s reservoir on Monday to create space for rainy rapids as peak flows of the largest flood reached record highs, Xinhua reported.
According to a newcomer at the state communications agency, Beijing saw the average rainfall over the last few days of recent heavy rain. Maximum rainfall was recorded at 543 mm Miyun, roughly equaling the average annual rainfall in Beijing.
On Monday, Beijing issued the highest level of flood alerts, urging residents to move away from the spawning river. The city’s weather observatory also issued a red warning against storms. This is the highest in the four-tier system, warning of the “very high risk” of night rain, flash floods in mountainous areas, landslides and landslides.
Authorities have ordered schools, construction sites and scenic locations throughout the city to be closed, and all rural homestays and campsites should be stopped.
By Tuesday afternoon, rain had stopped in central Beijing and flooding began sinking into its suburbs.
According to CCTV, heavy rains and associated flooding and associated flooding and geological disasters have resulted in “severe casualties and loss of property” in Beijing, Hebei, Jilin and the northern provinces of Shandong.
XI has directed “full efforts” to search and rescue people who are still missing, to properly evacuate at risk residents and to make “full efforts” to minimize the greatest possible casualties.
Newly appointed Chinese ambassador David Purdue expressed his sadness towards the victims.
“It was a great disappointment to hear about the loss of life in China, including Beijing, due to heavy rain. We sincerely express our deepest condolences to those who lost their family and loved ones,” he wrote on Social Platform X.
The fatal rain and flooding came just two years after the Chinese capital was slammed by record-breaking rain that killed 33 people. In 2023, Beijing was hit by the heaviest rainfall of 140 years, unleashing serious flash floods in the western mountain suburbs.
Many states in northern China have reported deaths from heavy rain.
In Hebei province surrounding Beijing, landslides killed four people and lost eight more, state media reported Monday.
In nearby Shanghai, a bus carrying 14 people went missing near the village during a small Sunday. Authorities discovered the bodies of passengers downstream and were still searching for others, Xinhua reported.
In coastal Shandong Province, 19 homes in Foothill village were destroyed last week, killing two people, and another 10 people went missing after six months of rain fell in five hours a night.
At Hebei, some residents trapped in floods and landslides are seeking support on social media.
A woman from Yang Jatai, a mountain village in Chendae city in Hebei province near Miyun, said her village was hit by floods and landslides, knocking down the house, cutting out the roads and knocking out electricity and traffic lights.
She escapes from the village to seek help. “Most people are not evacuated. Only a few people can come out to communicate with the outside world and bring some supplies back,” she said.
Haicen Yang and Martha Zhou contributed the report.
