(Yicai) Aug. 2 -- Eleven people have died and 27 are missing after Typhoon Doksuri’s remaining airflow battered large swathes of northern China for three straight days, causing widespread flooding, damage and misery.

The Central Meteorological Observatory issued the country’s second-ever red rainstorm alert since the system began in 2010 for Beijing, Tianjin and northern Hebei province on July 29. And the Ministry of Water Resources’ Haihe River Water Conservancy Commission raised the flood emergency response to Level I from Level II on Aug. 1.

Mentougou district, which lies on the outskirts of Beijing, was one of the first areas to feel the wrath of the storm. An average of 471.1 millimeters of rain was dumped on the district each day from 8.00 p.m. China time on July 29. And one day 723 mm of precipitation was recorded, the most ever.

The Yongding River, which runs through Mentougou, used to be dry most of the year but is now gushing with water. 

“I once went to Mentougou and saw the dry bed of the Yongding River and wondered why the riverbed was so wide,” a person living in Beijing said after seeing short videos of the raging river online.

The Yongding River, Ziya River and Daqing River in the Haihe River Basin have all burst their banks. Flooding and mudslides have torn down cell phone towers and cut off contact with the outside world.

Liu Lu, whose family lives in Mentougou, said “One minute I was talking to my family on the phone and the next there was no signal.” 

Liu said her family was warned by the municipal government about heavy downpours but they did not expect it to rain so much.

“People are safe and have moved to higher places, but their properties are badly damaged,” Liu said. “They have no water, no electricity, no access to internet and there have been no rescue efforts. They have some food left at home and mineral water from the mountain.”

Liu managed to re-establish contact with her family for a short period at 2.30 p.m. yesterday but since 7 p.m. there has been no news. The electricity supply and communications have yet to be restored, she said.

Eleven people have died and 27 are missing as of 6 a.m. on Aug. 1, the Beijing Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters Office said at 1 p.m. that day. Of these, four of the deceased and 13 of the missing are from Mentougou.

And there was more misery for those living in neighboring areas. A lady surnamed Ruan  from Shuiyuzui village in west Beijing was marooned on the second floor of her house for one day and one night. The downpours became intense around 10 a.m. on July 31 and within 20 minutes floodwaters were lapping at her doorstep, bringing much mud and silt. 

“Communications were knocked out at about 11.15 a.m. when I was trying to get in touch with my friends. Then the water supply was cut and the electricity went off,” Ruan said. “The Jingxi Ancient Road museum is flooded, trees have fallen over and asphalt roads have disintegrated, causing a huge mess.”

Ruan was eventually rescued at 5 p.m. on Aug. 1. It took some time for the rescue team to enter her village as roads were flooded and some had collapsed, she said. The teams are helping to evacuate residents and also to clean up the slurry on the roads. 

“The rescue teams had no way of knowing whether there were more people stranded in the village or not as mobile phones were not working,” she said.

Carnage in Beijing’s Hebei Town

Li Lin’s elderly father-in-law lives in Hebei town in Beijing’s Fangshan district, which is bordered to the south by the Dashi River. Li lost contact with his father-in-law on the afternoon of July 31.

Early in the morning of Aug. 1, when the rains abated, Li drove to his father-in-law’s residential community. The water levels had receded from the doorway, leaving a residue of silt. People were able to fetch water from pipes that were being fed into the compound, but it was very difficult for elderly people with mobility issues to collect water, especially as the elevator was not working.

Li climbed up fifteen flights of stairs to his father-in-law’s apartment and carried the weak man down. The nearby fresh produce market and small grocery shops were closed. As of Aug. 1, residents in the community had not been told whether they needed to stockpile food and water or if they needed to prepare to evacuate.

Many residents in the area had to fend for themselves as their communities flooded. Zhang Jun, who lives in an apartment complex in Liangxiang town, said the water level surged to the height of a step in less than 20 minutes on July 31, and then when the rain stopped, it swelled to calf-level. 

The water rose too quickly for it to be caused by the rains, Zhang said. She saw a parked car outside drifting away and water levels on the first floor where her family lived were soon thigh-high.

Zhang’s family sheltered in a corridor on the second floor of their building and waited for help to come. A rescue team arrived after dark, but there was no power and all communication was done by shouting, making it easy to overlook someone.

On the afternoon of Aug. 1, Zhang and her family were taken away by boat to a safe area. They were among the first to be rescued as they lived on the first floor and her family was made up of both young children and elderly people. On the boat trip, Zhang saw that in some low-lying areas rescuers were wading through water that was neck-deep.

There are many difficult questions that need to be answered. Could it be that the flood gates to the river were opened to release the high volume of water, and if so, why did no one warn those living nearby?

Mayu Village Mayhem

People living in Mayu village, which lies in the western part of Beijing’s Shijingshan district near Yongding River, were told to evacuate at 2 p.m. on July 30. 

The Mayu Village Neighborhood Committee instructed all 3,984 residents and its floating population of 5,132 to gather at two specific locations as soon as possible, from where they would be transported to shelters. Residents were advised not to return to the village until the danger had passed.

Members of the neighborhood committee, cadres, high-level government officials, police officers, and firefighters were all knocking on doors to notify residents. Within hours, more than 4,000 residents had been told in person to evacuate.

Zhang Yixiang grabbed a towel, toothpaste, some clothes and stuffed them into a bag before rushing out of the house, he told Yicai.

Three temporary shelters near Shougang Park, which hosted part of the Beijing Winter Olympics, were set up for the villagers.

Liu Xiaohan, a high school student, set up her bedding in one of the sites and sat on the floor with the other displaced people. They played cards or chess, browsed on their phones or caught up on sleep. A group of energetic children chased each other around the hall.

Zhang Yixiang was worried about his wife and daughter who lived in his hometown of Yi county, Hebei province. He lost contact with them on the morning of Aug. 1 as floods washed away the power lines. "My house is close to a hill, and I am afraid there might be landslides," he said.

Villagers were told they could go home at 6 p.m. on Aug, 1 and the neighborhood committee organized 25 buses to pick them up from the shelters.

That evening, a Yicai reporter saw shop workers on Shuangyu Road near Shougang Park cleaning up the thick sludge that had been left behind by the floods. A restaurant worker said that the heavy rain caused water levels to rise to his calves in just three minutes and before long they were over one meter-high. 

“Our store lost at least CNY4,000 (USD557) worth of ingredients, and a lot of equipment was washed away by the water,” a clerk said.

There are local people who are prepared to defend their rights, but the losses are difficult to calculate.

Rail Chaos

The extreme weather also caused chaos on the railway network. Three trains, K396, Z180, and K1178, were forced to come to a standstill on July 30 when passing through the Mentougou Mountains. Some passengers were stranded on the trains for over two days.

Almost 1,000 passengers and crew were stuck on the K396, which was traveling from Wuhai in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to Fengtai district in Beijing, when it ground to a halt near Mentougou Luopoling Station on July 30.

Wang Jia last received a WeChat message from her mother, who was on board the train, on the morning of July 31st, after she had spent the night on the train with other passengers. Since then she has not been able to reach her mother as the mobile phone lines are down. Wang is concerned that the harsh conditions may make her mother’s high blood pressure and high blood lipid conditions worse.

Some 328 passengers from the train arrived at Fengtai Station this morning, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Most of them are young people aged between 20 and 40 who were able to walk for hours through the night. The remaining passengers will be evacuated during the day.

Providing supplies to such a remote location in extreme weather was a tough task. Over 500 soldiers from the Beijing armed police marched to Luopoling Station yesterday to provide food, clothing and medicine to those stranded on the train. Station staff were also buying supplies from nearby villages to help the passengers.

And more than 800 passengers and crew were stuck on the K1178, which was travelling from Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to Beijing, for two days. But they reached Zhangjiakou station in northern Hebei province at noon today, according to the latest information from the Beijing railway department.

While the Z180 bound for Beijing from Urumqi in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region stopped at the Mentougou Anjiazhuang Station and the 900 passengers on board stayed in an auditorium and villagers’ homes yesterday.

Hebei's Zhuozhou

Several rivers in the city of Zhuozhuo in Hebei province are flooding due to heavy rainfall and upper valley sluice. Zhang Xue lives in a residential community less than 200 meters away from Juma River, a major river in the northern city. 

It started raining on July 27 in Zhuozhou but Zhang did not receive any emergency notification of flood discharging from the upper reaches until the afternoon of July 31. Suddenly, residents noticed the level of water rising to their ankles in 30 minutes and soon it was 1.5 meters high at the entrance to the community. Almost all cars were submerged and the residents were trapped inside.

People, mostly old people, and children, in more than 300 houses were stuck. Zhang's home, building No. 3, is the closest to the river. She heard a bang late on July 31. It meant the underground garage close to building No. 3 had collapsed, and the resulting huge pit was filling with water.

Some 11 people, including Zhang and her five-year daughter as well as neighbors from two other houses, were forced to stay inside a house of a neighbor they did not know very well. Drinking water, food, and medicines were scarce and at different points, there was no tap water, electricity, or gas. They only had some snacks and instant noodles to sustain them.

The water is still rising. On the first floor of the building, water mixed with yellow mud stained windows until the entrance was fully underwater yesterday at 4 p.m.

Some neighbors called for help via online posts yesterday morning. A volunteer called Liu Nan saw the posts but so far no rescue force has entered the area. Many teams arrived in Zhuozhou yesterday afternoon but they hesitated to engage in rescue operations as some teams did not have invitation letters or other relevant documents issued by the authorities, Lui said to Yicai.

Most people interviewed by Yicai said they had not received any official notifications about an emergency response as of yesterday morning. Just one statement said a river might start overflowing in the city of Gaobeidian and Baigou New Town.

Xinkou Village Evacuation

Chinese government authorities in northern Hebei province and Tianjin city, near Beijing, are mobilizing flood diversion and storage areas as the region suffers from some of the heaviest rainfall and flooding on record.

On July 31, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters ordered a flood storage area with an area of 379 square kilometers that is close to Jinghai district and Xiqing district in Hebei province and Tianjin to open at 2 a.m. on Aug. 1.

People in the area were told to leave, and, in a video seen by Yicai, although cars and bicycles could still be seen on the streets on Aug. 1, loudspeakers could be heard saying “everyone must leave before midnight tonight. Hurry up and pack your belongings. Take photos of anything you cannot take with you.”

Hao Keyu, a resident of Tianjin’s Xinkou village, said that although people were being told to leave, many villagers had not yet realized the seriousness of the situation. Although there had been heavy rainfall, there was no flooding.

However, the seriousness of the situation was becoming apparent. The entrances to Xinkou village were guarded, dams made of sandbags were erected along the river and roads, and the water level of the river has risen significantly.

Although there is a plan in place to evacuate the villagers, Hao is worried about his shelter for stray dogs which has around 600 dogs. Hao has bought 200 cages to help move the big dogs and has sent the weak dogs to board at a pet hospital. Around half of the stray dogs have been transferred, but there is only enough dog food for another two to three days. Hao said he has asked for help on Weibo, but there has been little response.

Flood Control

As the most important water system in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Haihe River Basin is one of seven major water systems in China. It is in the shape of a big fan, covering the North China Plain. At the top of the fan are the Yanshan and Taihang mountain ranges which form an arc-shaped barrier. Every year in July and August, monsoons carry a large amount of warm vapor from the seas in the southeast, which then condenses into rainfall when it rises against this barrier.

And so, since the time when records started, the region has always suffered from both drought and floods. In the 580 years from 1368 to 1948, there were 407 droughts and 383 floods in the Haihe River Basin.

After a major flood in 1963, the Chinese government embarked on a flood control project that took more than 10 years to complete. Hundreds of thousands of workers built more than 3,400 kilometers of dikes and expanded the size of many reservoirs to control flooding in the Haihe River Basin.

From 8.00 a.m. on July 29 to 7.00 a.m. on Aug. 1, one meter of precipitation was dumped on Zhaozhuang and Liangjiazhuang in Lincheng county, Xingtai city, Hebei province, which is the equivalent of two years’ rainfall in three days. And Beijing logged as much as 700 mm of precipitation in one day, the most in 140 years.

This time, torrential rainfall hammered the mountainous area south of Beijing on the border with Hebei province. As the floodwaters poured down the mountains, Zhuozhou, where the Yongding River, Dashi River and Zhuma River converge, was submerged. From July 31 to August 1, a number of flood diversion and storage areas near Zhuozhou were opened one after another.

Hebei province now has six of its 13 flood storage areas in use, which are slowing down the flow of the water. The floodwaters are expected to reach Tianjin on Aug. 9 and the city is preparing two flood storage areas for use and is organizing the evacuation of residents.

The rivers in the Yongding River Basin, the Beiyun River Basin and the Dashi River Basin have now fallen below the flood warning level.

Editor: Kim Taylor

(This article is from Yi Magazine.)