Bad weather in China: deaths in the subway, nearly 200,000 evacuated
Residents of Zhengzhou grapple with flooding after severe weather in the provincial capital of Henan, central China's province, July 20, 2021. AP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The floods affecting central China's Henan province have been described as "
extremely serious
" by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
With scenes of chaos Tuesday, July 20 in the city of Zhengzhou, which saw the equivalent of a year of rain fall in three days.
A provincial capital where the army was called in as reinforcements.
Publicity
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With our special envoys in Zhengzhou,
Stéphane Lagarde and Huang Chenkuang
The arrival of help has been looping on state televisions since Wednesday morning.
Images that reassure in the middle of these soggy landscapes.
Through the window of the train which slowed down 100 kilometers before the arrival, behind the curtain of rain, we saw fields of fruit trees and some expressways covered by the muddy waters which also invaded the capital of Henan, placed in red alert - the highest alert level for Chinese weather.
Zhengzhou under water
This Wednesday morning, the scars of these torrential rains, the most important recorded for a century, mark the esplanade of the station, also soggy, with upturned flowerpots, half a watermelon hanging from a railing, armchairs, bikes, scooters taken by the muddy torrent of the day before.
No more electricity, no telephone in the streets of the city, still flooded this Wednesday morning at 7 a.m., as evidenced by the videos recorded on smartphones, and in particular of these passengers stuck in the trains, hanging on the handles in front of the level of the rising water.
"
The water level reaches up to our necks
"
“
We are on metro line 5,”
a resident told the official Chine Nouvelle agency.
It is now almost 8:30 p.m.
We have experienced a very abnormal situation this past hour.
You see the water level reaching up to our necks.
Fortunately, the water is coming back down, and we are still in the wagon.
Firefighters are arriving.
They take people one by one.
"
“
I took the train last night from Beijing,”
says Ms. Guo, another passenger.
We stopped abruptly at the Henan border.
We waited for 5 hours, then we came back to Beijing.
"
Nearly 1,800 firefighters from 7 provinces arrived as reinforcements, according to the official press, to which are added 130 personnel from the air force, the national emergency response unit to floods, as well as engineers. civil.
Soldiers deployed along the rivers to deposit sandbags, especially near the Yihetan dam, near the former imperial capital Luoyang, which according to the army threatens to collapse.
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To read also: Bad weather in China: a dam "can give way at any moment" in the center of the country
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China
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