Heavy rain in Beijing, 38 dead and 80,000 displaced

At least thirty-eight dead and 80,000 displaced. This is the provisional toll of the heavy rains that hit Beijing. This was announced by the New China News Agency. The city government reported that 28 people died in Miyun and two others in Yanqing district yesterday. Both areas are far from the centre of the vast city. Today, the lifeless bodies of four more people were found dead in the neighbouring province of Hebei, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Earlier eight people had been reported missing after a landslide in a rural area of Luanping county and four of them had already been found lifeless. Heavy floods swept away cars and knocked down light poles in Miyun. More than 80,000 people were evacuated in Beijing, including about 17,000 in Miyun. The storm caused power outages in more than 130 villages in Beijing, destroyed communication lines and damaged more than 30 stretches of road. By midnight (local time), an average of more than 16 centimetres of rain had fallen in Beijing, with two cities in Miyun recording 54 centimetres of rain. Premier Li Qiang said the heavy rain and flooding in the hard-hit Miyun district had caused 'serious losses' and called for relief efforts.

 The district of Huairou, north of Beijing, and Fangshan, southwest, were also severely affected by the heavy rains. Dozens of roads were closed to traffic and more than 130 villages were left without electricity, the Beijing Daily reported, reiterating the authorities' warning to 'pay close attention to weather forecasts and warnings, and avoid travelling to areas at risk unless necessary'. Power lines were swept away by the violence of the water, while firefighters rescued 48 people trapped in a nursing home for the elderly, according to the state-run Cctv network.

Because of the impact of the bad weather, Beijing's Capital airport has changed some of today's flight schedules, activating "the Level I response mechanism" in order to minimise inconvenience for passengers" with rainfall continuing to hit Beijing until 8pm local time (2pm in Italy), with hourly rainfall exceeding 50 millimetres in some areas. President Xi Jinping, the Xinhua news agency reported, urged authorities on Monday night to plan for worst-case scenarios and speed up the relocation of residents in flood-prone areas: in recent days, he added, several areas of China have continued to experience heavy rainfall, leading to flooding and geological disasters, with serious loss of life and damage.

"We must do concrete work in flood prevention and disaster relief organisation, searching for missing and trapped people, and relocating and resettling threatened people to minimise casualties," Xi urged. Intense thunderstorms hit large parts of northern China this week, including the capital and Hebei, Jilin and Shandong provinces. The Beijing Daily said local authorities had 'made every effort to search for and rescue missing people and made every effort to reduce casualties'. In Hebei province, which surrounds the capital, a landslide in a village near the city of Chengde killed four people, while eight are still missing, Cctv reported.