Raging storm batters northern China

Heavy rains battered northern China on Monday, washing away cars and inundating subway stations, with millions of people in Beijing and its surrounding areas warned by authorities to stay at home.

Deadly storm Doksuri has swept northwards over the country since Friday, when it hit southern Fujian province after scything through the Philippines as a typhoon.

Hundreds of bus services in the capital were suspended, according to state news agency Xinhua, while the city government issued the highest flood warning for the suburban Dashihe River.

Chen Hong, a resident of the southern Fengtai district, shared footage with AFP that showed a parked van half-submerged in fast-flowing brown water on Monday morning as the rain continued to fall.

Residents in Chen’s neighborhood cleared mud outside their homes with shovels during a brief respite from the near-continuous downpour.

“Once it starts raining the road turns into a drain, and there’s water on the first floor inside houses,” said Chen, 52.

“The houses here are all old houses, so there are definitely concerns about safety,” she added.

A section of road surface in the outer Fangshan district caved in under rising water, local media reported.

Social media users uploaded footage of vehicles swept away by muddy torrents and thoroughfares turned into rapids on the outskirts of the city.

In one clip posted on Monday on the Instagram-like Xiaohongshu platform and geolocated by AFP, murky water can be seen swamping a large intersection in the outer Mentougou district next to high-rise apartment blocks.

And rainwater appeared to leak onto a subway platform in western Beijing’s university district in another Xiaohongshu video from Sunday that was geolocated by AFP.

Extreme weather

The streets of central Beijing were quieter than usual on Monday morning as residents heeded official recommendations to work from home, with only a handful of delivery drivers braving pools of water seen in usually packed bike lanes.

The governments of Beijing and neighboring Hebei province renewed red alerts for rainstorms on Monday.

China has been experiencing extreme weather conditions and posting record temperatures this summer, events that scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.

Experts have warned that the ongoing downpour could prompt even worse flooding than in July 2012, when 79 people died and tens of thousands were evacuated, according to local media.

An average of 170.9 millimeters of rain inundated Beijing in 40 hours between Saturday night and noon on Monday, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said.

That is nearly equivalent to the average rainfall for the entire month of July, according to official records.

© 2023 AFP