At least 10 dead in floods near Beijing

BEIJING (AFP): At least 10 people were killed in floods in a city in Hebei province, officials said on Saturday, in torrential rains that have battered northern China.

Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon that hit mainland China last Friday, has brought the most severe rains since records began 140 years ago.

Hebei province, which neighbours Beijing, has been the one of the most affected by the rains.

Officials announced on Saturday the provisional toll for Baoding, one of the province’s worst-hit cities, around 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Beijing.

By noon on Saturday (0400 GMT), more than 600,000 of Baoding’s 1.5 million residents had been evacuated from areas deemed to be at risk and 18 people were missing, officials said.

On Saturday, torrential rain hit northeast China for a second day, battering the provinces bordering Russia and North Korea.

A red alert remains in force in Beijing due to “geological risks” such as landslides, linked to the bad weather.

Clean-up operations are ongoing after the largest rainfall in years, which destroyed infrastructure and flooded entire districts.

China has been hit hard by extreme weather in recent months, from record-breaking heatwaves to deadly rain.

Natural disasters caused 147 deaths or disappearances last month, China said on Friday, after the heaviest rains since records began hit the country’s capital.

China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said that 142 of the deaths or disappearances recorded in July were caused by flooding or geological disasters.

Streets became rivers

Dramatic aerial photographs taken by AFP of Zhuozhou on Wednesday showed shopping streets turned into rivers of brown water, while others showed farmland in the surrounding areas completely submerged and floodwater stretching for miles.

AFP saw rescuers using boats to ferry instant noodles, bread and drinking water to residents who could not or did not want to leave properties engulfed by water.

Millions of people have been hit by extreme weather events and prolonged heatwaves around the globe in recent weeks, events that scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.

Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based NGO the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said that while the typhoon had brought the rain, rising ocean temperatures due to climate change were also causing the extreme weather.

“China has suffered unprecedented extreme heatwaves since last year… this year, there are record-breaking high temperatures in Northern China,” Ma told AFP this week.

“These heatwaves are linked to global warming, and this is what most climate scientists around the world tend to agree,” he said.