Streets turn to rivers as deadly flooding inundates northern Beijing

Nectar Gan and Joyce Jiang

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Days of torrential rain have killed at least 30 people in the northern outskirts of Beijing, state media reported Tuesday, as China grapples with yet another deadly rainy season marked by extreme downpours, devastating floods and landslides.In recent days, intense rainstorms have battered much of northern China – a densely populated part of the country home to massive metropolises as well as agricultural heartlands.

There, residents and their livelihoods have become increasingly vulnerable to worsening summer storms and floods, as well as scorching heatwaves and drought – posing a major challenge to the Chinese government as the climate crisis makes extreme weather more frequent and intense.The pounding rain intensified around the Chinese capital on Monday, killing 28 people in Miyun, an outlying mountainous suburb in the city’s northeast home to more than half a million people; another two were killed in Yanqing, also in the city’s north, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Footage circulating on social media shows brown floodwater sweeping through residential communities, washing away cars, knocking down electricity poles and turning streets into rivers in Miyun.Dozens of roads have been damaged, potentially complicating rescue efforts, and in more than 100 smaller, more rural villages, the downpours have also cut off electricity.More than 80,000 people have been relocated, including about 17,000 in Miyun, according to CCTV.

Some residents have described their horror on social media. A woman from a small town in Miyun wrote on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram, that she spent Monday night filled with “a pervasive sense of fear,” as a nearby river overflowed, gushing with trees, vehicles and construction debris.The place where I grew up was destroyed overnight. I never imagined that such devastation would occur even within the capital, Beijing,” she wrote.Firefighters arrived Tuesday morning for rescue, and telecommunication teams were still trying to recover phone signals in the remote area, she said.