60 People Died Due To Floods In China For A Week, 31 People Died In Jompo Panti

UNSPLASH/Tati Odintsova ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Extreme weather killed 60 people in northern China over the past week, with 31 deaths in nursing homes in Beijing's hilly Miyun district in one of the deadliest floods to hit the Chinese capital in years.

In Beijing, 44 people were killed and nine missing as of Thursday afternoon, Beijing Deputy Mayor Xia Linmao said at a news conference reported by Reuters on Thursday, July 31.

Heavy rains began to fall a week ago and peaked in Beijing and surrounding provinces on Monday.

Miyun experienced rainfall of up to 573.5 mm (22.6 inches) levels described by local media as "very damaging". Beijing's average annual rainfall is around 600 mm.

In the adjacent province of Hebei, 16 people died due to heavy rains.

It was also reported that eight people were killed in the city of Chengde, just outside Beijing, while 18 others have not been found.

The deaths occurred in villages in the Xinglong region, Chengde, Hebei Province, reporting Xinhua, state news agency, Wednesday night, citing local authorities, without specifying when or how the people died.

Deaths in Chengde occurred in villages bordering Miyun, Beijing, about 25 km (16 miles) from the Miyun reservoir, the largest reservoir in northern China.

The reservoir recorded a record overall height and water capacity during the rain that destroyed the surrounding cities.

At its peak on Sunday, up to 6,550 cubic meters of water equivalent to 2.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools flow into the reservoir every second.

In another village in Hebei, north of the reservoir, a landslide on Monday killed eight people, and four people were missing.

Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, which meteorologists attribute to climate change, pose a major challenge to Chinese policymakers. Officials have partly attributed the slowdown in factory activity to these events.