At least 25 dead, subway flooding,100,000 evacuated from Zhengzhou City
China’s military has blasted a dam to release floodwaters threatening one of its most heavily populated provinces, as the death toll in widespread flooding rose to at least 25.
China’s military has blasted a dam to release floodwaters threatening one of its most heavily populated provinces, as the death toll in widespread flooding rose to at least 25.
The dam operation was carried out late Tuesday night in the city of Luoyang, just as severe flooding overwhelmed the Henan provincial capital of Zhengzhou, trapping residents in the subway system and stranding them at schools, apartments and offices.
Another seven people were reported missing, provincial officials said at a news conference.
A video posted on Twitter by news site The Paper showed subway passengers standing in chest-high muddy brown water as torrents raged in the tunnel outside.
Transport and work have been disrupted throughout the province, with rain turning streets into rapidly flowing rivers, washing away cars and rising into people’s homes.
At least 10 trains carrying about 10,000 passengers were halted, including three for more than 40 hours, according to Caixin, a business news magazine. Sections of 26 highways were closed due to the rain, the Transport Ministry said on its social media account.
A blackout shut down ventilators at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, forcing staff to use hand-pumped airbags to help patients breathe, according to the city’s Communist Party committee. It said more than 600 patients were being transferred to other hospitals.
A woman aboard a subway in a flooded tunnel told her husband the water almost reached her neck and passengers had trouble breathing, the Henan Business Daily newspaper reported.
It said staff at a subway station told her husband all passengers had been evacuated but acknowledged that wasn’t so after he started a video chat with his wife on his cellphone showing she still was aboard.
The precise times and locations of the deaths and disappearances weren’t immediately clear, although the province said more than 100,000 people have been evacuated to safety. Read more from cbs17
From July 20th 2021
Major Flooding in Henan Province, China
The central Chinese province of Henan has become inundated with heavy rains and flash flooding.
At least three people closed its flooded subway system
Water has brought the populous, industrial hub to a standstill.
The following written content from DW
Heavy rainfall inundated streets and caused major rivers to burst their banks in the central province of Henan on Tuesday.
Unusually heavy rain has been falling in the province — twice the size of Austria with a population of 94 million — since the weekend.
Dozens of cities have seen massive disruption to transport services. The provincial capital of Zhengzhou, situated on the Yellow River, had to stop all subway services on Tuesday after 200 millimeters of rain fell in just one hour.
A video shared widely over social media showed torrents of water cascading through one of the city’s subway stations as well as people standing waist-deep in water inside a subway train.
Devastating flooding around the world
There were no reports of deaths or injuries so far, but some 10,000 residents in the province had been relocated to shelters, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Henan is a particularly populous province and a major transport hub. It is also a key base for industry and agriculture.
Summer often brings heavy rain and flooding to the region, but growing cities and changes to land use have increased the costs of flood damage.
The flooding in central China comes days after catastrophic flooding led to the deaths of over 160 people in western Germany.
New York City was also left with flooded subway stations after being hit by tropical storm Elsa earlier in the month.
Fears over key cultural sites
The heavy rain has sparked concern for the Longmen Grottoes — a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring thousand-year-old Buddhist carvings in limestone cliffs.
The world-famous Shaolin Temple in Dengfeng, known for its monks’ mastery of martial arts, was also forced to shut.
Since Saturday, over 3,500 weather stations have recorded rainfall over 50 mm. Some 150 stations saw rainfall exceed 250 mm. Read more from DW
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