Record-breaking rain batters northern China, official death toll at 20

It began raining in Beijing on Friday July 28 and it didn’t stop at all until Tuesday August 1.

The cause was Typhoon Doksuri — the highest-level typhoon of the year — which made landfall on eastern China’s Fujian Province on Friday morning. “Quanzhou municipal flood control authorities said 114 people had been injured in the typhoon by 1:30 p.m., with power cut to more than 500,000 households,” the SCMP reported on Friday. More than 400,000 people from the province were evacuated.

Doksuri is one of the strongest storms to hit China in years, even after it weakened to a tropical storm by the time it arrived in Jiangxi Province on Friday. It tore through the Philippines the week prior, killing dozens, with winds equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane (109 miles per hour).

It came on the heels of Typhoon Talim, which hit southern China on July 17, causing train and flight cancellations.

In response to Doksuri, authorities raised flood warnings and grounded flights in the Chinese capital and other northern areas over the weekend. “Flood control officials upgraded their emergency response order to level two, the second highest in their four-tier system, for Beijing and Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi and Henan on Sunday,” Bloomberg reported.

On Monday morning, two people were found dead in Mentougou in western Beijing, an area where 5,000 people had been evacuated earlier, Chinese state media reported. Two others died in northeastern Liaoning Province.

Meanwhile, rivers are rising to dangerous levels as evacuations continue across northern China.

Update — August 4

The official death toll is now at 20. Anger began to mount in flooded parts of Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing, because water that was diverted away hit places like the town of Zhuozhou, just southwest of the capital, with deadly force. According to the BBC, “Anger has only increased after Hebei’s Party Secretary Ní Yuèfēng 倪岳峰 proudly declared that his province would act as a ‘moat’ to protect Beijing,” and people began venting on social media. But critical posts have all been censored already.

Video from social media:

Heavy rain from Typhoon Doksuri has triggered landslides and flooding in China’s Fujian Province.

Rescuers are now looking for residents trapped in submerged houses, while authorities assess the colossal clean-up operation ⤵️

🔗: https://t.co/Rih9egc9ZL pic.twitter.com/jly7t7IQgv

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 30, 2023

Breaking: Video on China’s social media shows heavy flooding in Beijing’s suburbs #门口沟 #China #Flooding #flooding #Beijing #Doksuri #杜苏芮 pic.twitter.com/2PSZuyqLiD

— ShanghaiEye🚀official (@ShanghaiEye) July 31, 2023

A man trapped in his car in strong gushing floodwaters in China was rescued by firefighters while other people were evacuated from their homes in the capital as torrential rains followed Typhoon Doksuri, the state television reported pic.twitter.com/jNzcEqNy7A

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 31, 2023

—Nadya Yeh contributed research.