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Typhoon Doksuri Floods Northern China Forcing Thousands to Evacuate
Typhoon Doksuri: Heavy Downpour Floods Northern China Forcing Thousands to Evacuate
Scenes of Devastation and Dramatic Rescues as Typhoon Doksuri Drenches China, Causing Widespread Flooding
BBC 1 AUG 2023
Villagers gather near a village damaged by floodwaters.
Northern China has been copping a battering, with remnants of Typhoon Doksuri dumping record rainfall on Beijing, washing away cars and forcing the capital to issue its highest alerts for flooding and landslides.
At least two people have been killed and hundreds have been trapped as roads have turned into rivers.
Videos posted by state media show dramatic rescues from vehicles half-submerged in fast-moving torrents in the Mentougou district.
Meanwhile, footage has captured emergency personnel creating a rope bridge to evacuate two trapped workers in Gansu province as mountains have crumbled.
Emergency personnel used ropes to pull a worker to safety after landslides in a mountainous area.
Local journalists and residents have also detailed the devastation on social media.
"This morning it was crazy; the water overflowed the Mentougou river and the whole avenue was flooded," Guo Zhenyu, a 49-year-old resident, told AFP.
Yellow bulldozers, workers in orange mackintoshes and residents cleared away the mud and debris during a period of lighter rain on Monday afternoon.
"I'm old but I've never seen flooding like this before in my life," Mentougou resident Qin Quan said.
Rescue workers float and elderly couple on a mat in floodwaters.
She showed AFP a video on her phone, shared among residents of the area, of workers attempting to resuscitate an unconscious man, as well as footage of a man desperately clinging to a pole with one hand as water washes over him.
The much larger and still swollen Yongding river in the same district churned up debris in brown torrents as residents looked on in shock from a bridge.
Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, has swept northwards over China since Friday, when it hit southern Fujian province after scything through the Philippines.
Doksuri was one of the strongest storms to hit China in years, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Huge waves from Typhoon Doksuri lash coastal areas in Qingdao City in China's Shandong province
Beijing's neighbouring city of Tianjin, as well as Hebei province in a region nearly the size of Britain, were also pounded by the relentless rain, and officials issued renewed red alerts for rainstorms and flooding on Monday.
The incessant rainfall over the weekend until Monday morning has broken daily precipitation records at 14 weather stations in Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong provinces.
Experts have warned that the ongoing downpour could prompt even worse flooding than in July 2012, when 79 people were killed and tens of thousands were evacuated, according to local media.
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