'All gone': Beijing villagers left with nothing after deadly floods
Swathes of northern China have endured deadly rains and floods this week that killed at least 48 people and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands.
As clean-up efforts began on Wednesday (Jul 30), AFP journalists visited the northern Beijing district of Huairou - one of the worst-hit areas less than 100 kilometres from the bustling city centre.
In Anzhouba village, muddy waters had receded, exposing scraps of metal and broken branches.
Local Hu recounted a frantic call to her stepdaughter, 23, who was home with her parents when the waters struck on Saturday night.
"But before I could finish my words, the call dropped," she told AFP.
She later found out that rushing water from the river around 10 metres away had flooded the house and blocked the front door.
Her daughter was forced to kick out the window and evacuate her grandparents to the neighbour's balcony, dragging her disabled grandfather as his wife pushed from below.
"I've never seen this before, in all my 40 years of life. Neither have those who've lived 80 or 90 years," she said.
"I returned today to retrieve his medicine, but the water swept it all away."
IT'S ALL GONE
Wearing slippers, she marched over downed power lines and debris from broken fences and destroyed cars as she surveyed the damage to the village where she has lived her entire life.
Mud with streaks of silt caked her walls - evidence that the flood waters had reached at least over a metre high.
"I've already lived here for many years - my parents have lived here for almost 70 years, I've lived here for 40 - I can't bear to leave."
A small blue sofa near the front door had washed out into the alley.
The family of six subsists on 2,000 (US$278) to 3,000 yuan a month, Hu, a stay-at-home carer whose husband works as a labourer, said.
They grow their vegetables - from green beans, cucumbers, potatoes - but the field has been destroyed.
"It's gone. All gone, flushed away," she said.
"UNLIVABLE"
In Liulimiao town, which covers Anzhouba village, AFP journalists saw evacuations taking place throughout Wednesday, with elderly villagers driven by bus from their mountainous homes.
An older woman who declined to give her name said she was "not allowed" to return home but had gone back anyway to check in.
When the floods hit, she said, "there was nobody paying attention to us", adding the water hit "suddenly" on Saturday.
Another villager, surnamed Wang, gazed at the destruction of his home, which he built with government subsidies 15 years ago.
He estimated his losses to be around 100,000 yuan (US$14,000).
His wife and two daughters were home and unable to open the doors when the waters "suddenly rose".
The waters reached 1.5 metres, leaving brown muddy residue on the wall and a mounted TV.
Their car, which Wang bought so his daughter could practice driving, was washed uphill from outside their home.
Five more minutes of flooding might have put his family's life in danger, he said.
"It didn't give people a chance," Wang said.
His home was now "unlivable", he explained tearfully.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
11 hours ago
- CNA
Beijing expands storm alert as fatal floods keep city on edge
BEIJING: Beijing on Monday (Aug 4) warned residents in all city districts to brace for a new round of heavy rainfall, telling them to avoid going out, a week after catastrophic floods killed dozens in the deadliest deluge to hit the Chinese capital since 2012. Up to 200mm of rain could hit parts of Beijing over a six-hour period from midday, weather forecasters warned. The city of 22 million people receives 600mm of rainfall each year on average. The warning comes as authorities rush to reinforce ageing flood defences, fine-tune weather forecasts and update evacuation plans amid reports of bodies being pulled from raging flood waters across the country, including at least three at a flooded wellness camp in Hebei province. At least 44 people died in Beijing after heavy rains from Jul 23 to 29. Most of the dead were people unexpectedly trapped by rapidly rising waters at a nursing home in Miyun district on the city's northeastern outskirts. The fatalities led authorities to admit to shortcomings in their contingency plans for extreme weather. By noon on Monday, Beijing had placed all of its 16 districts on the highest level of preparedness, in the first citywide state of readiness since Jul 28, shutting parts of the Great Wall and other outdoor leisure venues and halting operations of below-ground businesses. The risk of flash floods and landslides is "extremely high", authorities said. In the summer of 2012, 79 people died in Beijing in the city's deadliest flooding in living memory. Fangshan district was the worst-hit, with one resident reporting a rise in floodwaters of 1.3m in just 10 minutes. Beijing's topography has been described by some as a rain "trap", with its mountains to the west and north capturing moist air and amplifying any ensuing rainfall as a result. WELLNESS RETREAT As of Saturday, torrential rains that swept through "Beijing Valley", a riverside wellness retreat in the Hebei city of Chengde adjacent to Beijing, had claimed three lives, with four still missing, China's state news agency Xinhua reported. Around 40 people had gathered on Jul 27 for an event at the site, where organisers directed them into tents pitched on low-lying land next to a river bend, Caixin Media reported. By 2am the next morning, floodwaters had risen to knee height, forcing attendees to scramble towards the camp's only exit. The site bore similarities to Camp Mystic in Texas, where at least 28 children were swept to their deaths last month by floodwaters after the Guadalupe River burst its banks amid torrential rain. In China's southern Guangdong province over the weekend, the bodies of five people were recovered after a large-scale search operation involving more than 1,300 rescuers.
Business Times
14 hours ago
- Business Times
Torrential rain in Taiwan kills four over past week
[TAIPEI] Storms dumped more than two metres of rain in parts of Taiwan over the past week, killing four people and triggering floods and landslides in central and southern areas, authorities said on Monday. Torrential rain has lashed swathes of the island since July 28, forcing several thousand people to seek shelter, damaging roads, and shuttering offices. Maolin, a mountainous district in southern Taiwan, recorded 2.8 m of rain since July 28, Central Weather Administration (CWA) forecaster Li Ming-siang told AFP. That's more than Taiwan's annual rainfall of 2.1 m last year, according to the agency's data. The unusually heavy downpours were caused by a low-pressure system and strong southwesterly winds, Li said. 'The southwesterly winds have brought heavy moisture from the South China Sea to Taiwan,' Li said. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Li said southwesterly winds were normally brought by typhoons affecting the island and seasonal rain in May and June. This time it was caused by Typhoon Co-May pushing southwesterly winds further north as it swept past eastern Taiwan on its way to China, Li said, adding the rain was not linked to climate change. The average rainfall across the island last month was the highest for the month of July since 1939, the CWA said. The torrential rain follows Typhoon Danas, which hit Taiwan in early July. Two people were killed and hundreds injured as the storm dumped more than 500 mm of rain across the south over a weekend. 'We rarely encounter a disaster of this scale,' Premier Cho Jung-tai said during a visit to a flood-hit area in the southern Tainan City on Monday. 'From Typhoon Danas up to now, we've faced nearly a month of continuous and heavy rainfall.' The week of bad weather left four people dead, three missing, and 77 injured, a disaster official said. Nearly 6,000 people were forced to leave their homes. The state weather forecaster expects the rain to ease in the coming days. Taiwan is accustomed to frequent tropical storms from July to October. Scientists say human-driven climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely. AFP
CNA
3 days ago
- CNA
Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki erupts again, spews ash plume 18km high
JAKARTA: Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, erupted for a second straight day, sending a column of volcanic materials and ash up to 18 kilometres into the sky early Saturday (Aug 2) and blanketing villages with debris. No casualties were immediately reported. Another eruption Friday evening had sent clouds of ash up to 10 kilometres high and had lit up the night sky with glowing lava and bolts of lightning. The two eruptions happened in a span of less than five hours. Indonesia's Geology Agency recorded an avalanche of searing gas clouds mixed with rocks and lava travelling up to 5 kilometres down the slopes of the mountain. Drone observations showed deep movement of magma, setting off tremors that registered on seismic monitors. Volcanic material, including hot thumb-sized gravel, was thrown up to 8 kilometres from the crater, covering nearby villages and towns with thick volcanic residue, the agency said. It asked residents to be vigilant about heavy rainfall that could trigger lava flows in rivers originating from the volcano. Saturday's eruption was one of Indonesia's largest since 2010 when Mount Merapi, the country's most volatile volcano, erupted on the densely populated island of Java. That eruption killed more than 350 people and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate. It also came less than a month after a major eruption on Jul 7 forced the delay or cancellation of dozens of flights at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport, and covered roads and rice fields with thick, gray mud and rocks. Lewotobi Laki-laki, a 1,584-metre volcano on the remote island of Flores, has been at the highest alert level since it erupted on Jun 18, and an exclusion zone has been doubled to a 7-kilometre radius as eruptions became more frequent. The Indonesian government has permanently relocated thousands of residents after a series of eruptions there killed nine people and destroyed thousands of homes in November. Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 280 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the 'Ring of Fire', a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
