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Armed Police and villagers in Xingtai, Hebei province, push disused buses and sandbags on to a levee to prevent it collapsing after days of torrential rain. Photo: China News Service

Traumatised villagers in Chinese flood village say authorities failed to warn them of disaster

Father who lost two children is just one many villagers demanding explanations why officials were unable to warn them of the impending disaster in the middle of the night

Zhang Erqiang was devastated by the loss of both his children after a flood swept through Xingtai city early on Wednesday.

The flood took my daughter and son away in a split second. It took me the whole day to find their bodies
Zhang Erqiang

Like many of his fellow 2,000 villagers in Daxian, Zhang is demanding to know why officials failed to warn them of the impending flashflood and act quickly enough to help them evacuate.

Daxian, 400km south of Beijing, was one of the worst-hit villagers in the flood that left least seven people dead, including three children. Two other children were missing, The Beijing News reported.

“The flash flood took my daughter [Zhang Yunuo], 10, and son [Zhang Haoyu], 6, away in a split second. It took me the whole day to find their bodies,” Zhang told the newspaper.

While some villagers believe the flood was caused by a deluge in an upstream reservoir, authorities have categorically denied the disaster was due to human error. But officials admitted their warnings, issued through TV, Wechat and microblogging services just a few minutes before the floods hit, may have been too late to avoid the heavy casualties in villages including Daxian where power and communications were also disrupted.

When Zhang’s house was hit by a wall of water at about 1.50am, village chief Zhang Zhange had just received an emergency call from township authorities that the flood was approaching Daxian village.

When the village chief tried to alert villagers through a loudspeaker, it was already too late.

Villager Tian Zhien, who lived close to Zhang, said when he was woken up by the alarm, the flood had ­already reached his house. “I thought to alert my neighbours, but it was already impossible to get out. All I could do was rush my family to our roof,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Villager Gao Shunshan also said he and his family were lucky to survive the most extreme flood he had ever seen. “I woke up at about 2am when my refrigerator was pushed over by the flood, and the water was already knee deep. By the time I reached the bedroom door, it had risen to my waist,” he said. Like many villagers, Gao and his family of 10 people sat on their roof in the pouring rain all night.

It was already impossible to get out. All I could do was rush my family to our roof
Tian Zhien, villager

Authorities said the flooding was so devastating at Daxian partly because the Qili River, which is normally about 100m wide, narrows dramatically to just over a dozen metres at the section near the village.

The floods were also exacerbated by the installation of central heating pipelines near the village in the past few months, which blocked much of the riverway with mounds of earth, according to reports in Caixin magazine and several other mainland ­publications.

To make things worse, levees near Daxian had not been strengthened for a long time, villagers said. “The rainfall over the past few days was not particularly heavy compared to 1996 when our village was hit by the floods. Apparently, no one had seriously believed we’d be caught off guard by another floods,” a villager told Caixin.

The city of Xingtai was severely waterlogged after the flood waters receded. More heavy rain is forecast for the region in the coing days. Photo: Xinhua

But villagers said it was local authorities’ attempts to cover up the disaster that had ignited their anger.

Local deputy Communist Party chief Wang Qingfei said in an interview on Wednesday that the ­government-led evacuation efforts were a complete success with “no casualties”.

A video of Wang kneeling before distraught, wailing relatives who lost family members went viral on social media, showing three distraught women clutching at his arm while asking how many had died. He later admitted that the authorities were aware of the casualties and he knelt down “in order to appease public anger and seek their understanding”.

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