At least 37 people were killed as the heaviest downpour in six decades hit Beijing, causing chaos and sparking criticism of officials ill-prepared to deal with an emergency situation.
The rainstorms, which started on Saturday afternoon and continued until early Sunday morning, flooded key roads, left cars floating, paralysed transport, and sent torrents of water into homes and car parks. More than 50,000 people in the capital were evacuated, mostly from outlying mountainous districts, Xinhua reported.
The death toll is expected to rise with the media saying yesterday that numerous people, including rescue workers, were missing.
The heavy downpour caused 545 flights to be cancelled or delayed at Beijing Capital International Airport and stranded more than 80,000 people, Xinhua said. Starting from Saturday afternoon, more than 20 Beijing-bound flights at Hong Kong International Airport were delayed and one was cancelled. Some of the flights were delayed for almost 12 hours. Train services between Beijing and Guangzhou were also suspended as some sections of the railway line were under water.
Always considered a dry city, an orange alert - the second highest rainstorm warning - was issued for the first time in Beijing on Saturday evening. An average of 17cm of rain was recorded by 6am yesterday, the largest since weather records began in 1951. Hebei town in Fangshan district recorded 46cm of rain, according to the Beijing Meteorological Bureau. The rainstorms were the first stern test for the leadership of Guo Jinlong, newly elected as party secretary last month. CCTV reported that Guo held an emergency meeting after midnight and demanded that safety be given top priority.
However, the capital city's handling of the disaster attracted much criticism. The critics say the weekend rainstorms exposed inadequacies in the capital city's infrastructure, especially the lack of sufficient storm-water facilities to deal with heavy rain.
'It clearly showed that the city's infrastructure has big problems,' said Shi Qixin, a professor of transport engineering at Tsinghua University.
