Floods in China: Zhengzhou devastated, rain still threatens

Published on : 07/22/2021 – 07:01

Water and electricity cuts, roads blocked and incredulous residents who see the damage: Zhengzhou is trying to regain the upper hand Thursday after the floods which killed at least 33 people in this city in central China.

The equivalent of a year of rain in three days: the metropolis of 10 million inhabitants suffered a devastating thunderstorm on Tuesday that engulfed a metro line and left impressive clusters of cars on the surface.

The city, located about 700 km south of Beijing, remains flooded in some neighborhoods, while maintenance workers, firefighters and repairmen are busy clearing the damage while the national meteorology announces still rains before a lull on Friday.

Under a light rain, the inhabitants try Thursday morning to leave their homes to refuel or to go to work. At the exit of a tunnel in the city center, many are stunned by the piling up of dozens of vehicles carried away by the waves.

Nearby businesses have suffered as well.

“The water has risen up to there, about 80 centimeters,” Mr. Chen, owner of a popular restaurant on Yongan Street, told AFP.

“My losses? It’s okay, compared to what happened in the tunnel,” he explains, while it is not known whether motorists are still in the cars stuck inside.

Some vehicles only have the roof sticking out of the muddy water.

Overhead parking

Faced with the scale of the disaster, President Xi Jinping called for mobilization on Wednesday after the “extremely serious” floods.

The country remains in shock at the images of metro line 5, overrun by a sudden flood, with passengers keeping their heads above water standing on seats, as the air becomes thinner.

The government has released emergency aid worth 100 million yuan (13 million euros) for Henan, the densely populated province of which Zhengzhou (pronounced: “Djangue-djo”) is the capital.

The latest report for the entire province shows 33 dead and eight missing in recent days, while 376,000 people have been evacuated, according to the authorities.

While more than 200,000 hectares of crops have been swallowed up, the damage is estimated at 1.22 billion yuan (160 million euros), according to the same source.

Scorched by the storm, many residents of Zhengzhou parked their cars high up on footbridges and road interchanges, to escape a possible upwelling.

Further north, as far as Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing, certain sectors have in turn been placed on red alert.

Millennium?

In Zhengzhou, a large number of hotels no longer welcome customers due to a lack of electricity or clean water supply, such as the Hampton hotel in the city center.

“The storm flooded our electrical systems. We use a generator to have a power supply but just for reception on the ground floor”, explains a receptionist.

While public transport is at a standstill, many people from the rest of the country want to leave the city.

“I’m looking to go back to Shanghai,” says Zhang Peng, who is trying to book a train through a mobile application on his smartphone. “Even if the weather has improved, there is not yet available. But it seems to be unlocked for planes,” he hopes.

The impact of climate change is mentioned to explain these floods, the most violent recorded in the region since measurements began to be recorded 60 years ago.

Some officials even refer to the worst floods of the “millennium”.

“These disasters show that extreme weather events and their intensity are increasing,” wrote the Global Times daily in an editorial on Thursday.

“It is no longer enough to say vaguely + once a millennium or once a century +”, the newspaper warns. “We need to be prepared to face catastrophic weather more often.”

With AFP