Extreme Rain Nearly A Week Killed 30 People In Beijing

UNSPLASH/Coralt Zou ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Extreme weather killed 30 people in Beijing, China, after heavy rains for less than a year fell in less than a week.

This condition forced more than 80,000 people to evacuate, damage roads, and cut off electricity and communication in more than 130 villages.

Hundreds of flights and a number of train services were delayed or suspended as the storm peaked on Monday evening, weighing on the capital's disaster management capabilities and encouraging some experts to refer to the city as a "rainfall".

Most of the rain has stagnated in the mountainous region north of Beijing near the Great Wall, with 28 deaths reported in the district of Miyun and two in Yanqing, Xinhua reported.

The government news agency did not mention when or how the death occurred.

"The floods came so fast, there were no shelters," said 33-year-old Zhai, who runs a grocery store in Miyun.

He pointed out to Reuters the trails that were left behind when the flood receded. The tracks had reached a height of 1.5 meters (4.92 feet), submerging his shop for hours and damaging his food and drink supplies.

Liu, who owns a nearby restaurant, almost cried as he looked at the overturned benches and the surface of the table was muddy in his restaurant.

Big equipment like a refrigerator was submerged for hours and most likely damaged, said her husband, Yang, who estimated the damage to more than 100,000 yuan ($14,000).

Heavy rains began to fall on July 23 and peaked around Beijing and surrounding provinces on Monday, with Miyun experiencing rainfall of up to 573.5 mm (22.6 inches) - the rate local media described as "very damaging".

Beijing's average annual rainfall is around 600 mm.

The hardest rain occurred on Saturday last week in the Huairoro hills area, Beijing, where 95.3 mm rained in an hour.

"The cumulative amount of rainfall is very high - reaching 80'90% of the total annual in just a few days in some areas," said Xuebin Zhang of Victoria University in Canada and Pacific Climate Impact Consortium CEO.

"Very few systems are designed to deal with such heavy rainfall in such a short time," Zhang said.

"The local topography of the mountains in the west and north trapped the humid air and pushed it up, exacerbating the flood," he said.

China's usually arid northern region has experienced record rain in recent years, with some scientists linking it to global warming.

In the summer of 2023, heavy rains and floods killed 33 people in Beijing. Rainfall in the city of Xingtai in neighboring Hebei exceeded 1,000 mm in two days double the annual average.