TERRIFYING videos have emerged showing roads being turned into rivers after horror floods “not seen in a hundred years” battered China.
At least 38 people have been killed and more than 80,000 residents were forced to evacuate after the torrential downpours hit parts of the country, including the capital Beijing.
Swaths of northern China were lashed by torrential downpours that sparked landslides and flooding, state media said on Tuesday.
Footage shows a powerful gush of water flooding the streets.
Murky water submerged homes, cars and roads – even highways.
Uprooted trees lay in piles in the town of Taishitun, about 60 miles northeast of central Beijing.
Weather authorities have issued their second-highest rainstorm warning for the capital and neighbouring Hebei and Tianjin – as well as 10 other provinces, state news agency Xinhua reports.
The rains are expected to last till Wednesday, it added.
The heavy rainstorms have so far killed at least 38 people in Beijing.
And 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.
Locals have said that the “rain was unusually heavy, it’s not normally like this.”
One resident of Beijing described the floods as something seen “once in a hundred years”.
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 Global Times.
And in Hebei – just around 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.
Local authorities have issued flash flood warnings through Tuesday evening.
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 ($49million) for disaster relief in nine regions hit by heavy rains.
A separate 200 million yuan has been set aside for the capital, the broadcaster said.
Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heat.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14851903/horror-floods-landslide-china-beijing/
