The death toll from devastating floods in China’s capital Beijing has now risen to 33, according to officials.
Another 18 people are said to be missing following heavy rain and flooding in the aftermath of the recent Typhoon Doksuri – one of the strongest to hit northern China in a decade.
Officials say the storm, and subsequent flooding from days of heavy rain, has impacted nearly 1.3 million people, with the city’s mountainous western outskirts one of the worst hit areas.
As many as 59,000 homes have collapsed, with another 147,000 damaged, according to state media. Around 100 bridges have also damaged, along with roads, hampering rescue efforts.
More than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of cropland have been flooded, sparking fears about potential outbreaks of crop and animal diseases.
Agriculture minister Tang Renjian urged local authorities to step-up measures to prevent and control major disease outbreaks caused by dead animals, pests and insects.
A man wades through floodwaters in a flooded corn farm near Zhuozhou
Xia Linmao, a Beijing vice mayor, meanwhile warned it could take up to three years to repair the damage from the flooding.
Much of the country’s north remains threatened by unusually heavy rainfall, while other parts of China have also seen heavy flooding, partly from the impact of Typhoon Doksuri.
Hebei province, just outside Beijing, has seen some of the region’s worst flooding.
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Woman rescued from flood by man who can’t swim
One local weather station there said last week that the rainfall amounted to 1,003mm (3.3ft) over the three-day period from Saturday (29 July) to Monday (31 July).
Rainfall in the province averages 605mm (1.9ft) a year.
In Zhuozhou, to the southwest of Beijing, in Hebei province, around 125,000 people evacuated as a result of the flooding have started to return to their homes with floodwaters subsiding.
A resident in Zhuozhou moves a cabinet with her father at her parents’ home following flooding
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A rescue operation is under way in Ya’an in the south-western province of Sichuan, where about a dozen visitors were swept away by rushing waters, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The bodies of seven victims were recovered, while four people were rescued.
Heavy rains have battered northern China since late July.
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Roads turn into rivers in China
China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998 when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River.
In 2021, more than 300 people died in flooding in the central province of Henan when record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou.
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