Hebei province, which surrounds the capital Beijing on three flanks, issued several alerts for several of its cities. The Heilongjiang region in the north has evacuated entire towns in anticipation of potentially deadly flooding.
Rescue operations are still underway. At least 20 people were killed in suburban Beijing and 27 others were missing after weekend storms quickly overwhelmed drainage systems.
Beijing usually has dry summers, but this year it had a string of record-breaking days of heat that ended dramatically over the weekend with almost a week of practically constant downpours and drizzles. Some areas were left without electricity, public transport and summer holidays were suspended and the authorities asked residents in the metropolis of more than 20 million inhabitants to stay at home.
The cities of Tianjin and Zhuozhou were also badly affected. Firefighters, aided by volunteer rescue groups, searched for people trapped in apartment buildings and railway tunnels and saved hundreds of them.
As the capital, the city that houses the headquarters of the ruling Communist Party and cultural treasures such as the ancient Forbidden City, Beijing has a special flood protection operation that includes diverting water to neighboring regions. This initiative generated criticism on Friday on social networks who pointed out that the floods in surrounding areas could have been avoided if the rainwater had passed through the city’s canals and rivers.
Other regions, especially the south, suffered unusually deadly summer floods while other parts of the country battled drought, adding pressure on food supplies for the country’s 1.4 billion people already facing suspension of shipments of grain as a result of the Russian war in the Ukraine.
