Beijing hit by deadly floods amid heavy rains

At least 30 people have been killed in Beijing this week in floods sweeping the Chinese capital. More than 80,000 people were relocated in Beijing, the city government said in a statement. Beijing saw more than 16 centimetres of rain by Monday night and was forecast to get 30cm of rainfall on Tuesday. In Miyun district, 28 people died and 17,000 people had to be relocated. Two people died in Yanqing district. Another four people were killed in a landslide on Monday in neighbouring Hebei province. Eight others were missing, as six months' worth of rain fell over the weekend. Another 10,000 people were evacuated from the nearby Jizhou district under the city of Tianjin, Xinhua reported. A road has been severely damaged after heavy rains hit the Miyun district.

A high-level emergency response was launched by Beijing authorities on Monday night, ordering people to stay inside, closing schools, suspending construction work and stopping outdoor tourism and other activities. The central government said in a statement that it had sent 50 million yuan ($10 million) to Hebei and dispatched a high-level team of emergency responders to help the affected cities, which include Chengde, Baoding and Zhangjiakou. China's Premier Li Qiang said the heavy rain and flooding in Miyun caused \"serious casualties\" and called for rescue efforts, according to China's Xinhua News Agency. Heavy rain is expected to persist in parts of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin on Tuesday, the emergency management ministry said on Monday night, adding that \"the disaster relief situation is complex and severe\".

The storm knocked out power in more than 130 villages in Beijing, destroyed communication lines and damaged more than 30 sections of road. Heavy flooding washed away cars and downed power poles in Miyun, which borders Hebei's Luanping county. Two towns in Miyun recorded 54cm of precipitation, which forced authorities to release water from a reservoir that was at its highest level since it was built in 1959. Trees were uprooted, streets were flooded and buildings were left with mud on the walls in the town of Taishitun, about 100km north-east of central Beijing.

A resident told state media Beijing News that he could not reach his relatives because communication lines were down. \"The flood came rushing in, just like that, so fast and suddenly. In no time at all, the place was filling up,\" said Zhuang Zhelin, who was clearing mud with his family from their building materials shop. Next door, Zhuang's neighbour Wei Zhengming, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, was shovelling mud in his clinic: his feet in slippers were covered in mud. \"It was all water, front and back. I didn't want to do anything. I just ran upstairs and waited for rescue. I remember thinking, if no one came to get us, we'd be in real trouble,\" Mr Wei said.

Heavy rain started last Wednesday and intensified around Beijing and surrounding provinces on Monday. \"The cumulative amount of precipitation has been extremely high — reaching 80–90 per cent of the annual total in just a few days in some areas,\" said Xuebin Zhang of the University of Victoria in Canada and chief executive of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC). \"Very few systems are designed to handle such an intense volume of rainfall over such a short period,\" Professor Zhang said. The local topography — mountains to the west and north — \"trapped\" the moist air and forced it to rise, enhancing the extraordinary amount of precipitation, he said.

The 2023 floods in Beijing killed at least 33 people.