Extreme weather in northern China has killed at least 60 people over the past week, including 31 residents of a Beijing nursing home swept away by one of the capital’s deadliest floods in years, officials said.
In Beijing, 44 people were killed and nine were missing as of midday Thursday, deputy mayor of Beijing, Xia Linmao, said at a press conference.
Heavy rains began a week ago and peaked around Beijing and surrounding provinces Monday, with Miyun experiencing rainfall of up to 573.5 millimeters (22.6 inches) – levels local media described as “extremely destructive.” The average annual rainfall in Beijing is around 600 millimeters.
In the nearby province of Hebei, 16 people died as a result of the intense rainfall, authorities said.
At least eight were killed in the city of Chengde just outside Beijing, with 18 unaccounted for.
The deaths occurred in villages within the Xinglong area of Chengde in Hebei province, state-run Xinhua reported late on Wednesday, citing local authorities, without specifying when or how the people died.
The deaths in Chengde occurred in villages that border Beijing’s Miyun, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the Miyun reservoir, the largest in China’s north.
The reservoir saw record-breaking overall water levels and capacity during the rains, which devastated nearby towns.
At its peak on Sunday, up to 6,550 cubic metres of water – about 2.5 Olympic-sized pools’ worth – flooded into the reservoir every second.
In another Hebei village north of the reservoir, a landslide on Monday killed eight people, with four missing.
Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, which meteorologists link to climate change, pose major challenges for Chinese policymakers, with officials partially attributing a slowdown in factory activity to such events.
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