By Ryan Woo and Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) -Beijing had evacuated more than 70,000 residents by Monday afternoon and warned others to brace for a new round of heavy rainfall, a week after catastrophic floods killed dozens in the deadliest deluge to hit the Chinese capital since 2012.
Up to 200mm (7.9 inches) of rain could hit parts of Beijing over a six-hour period from midday, weather forecasters warned. The city of 22 million people receives on average 600mm of rainfall each year.
The warning comes as authorities rush to reinforce ageing flood defences, fine-tune weather forecasts and update evacuation plans amid reports of bodies being pulled from raging flood waters across the country, including at least three at a wellness camp in Hebei province.
At least 44 people died in Beijing after heavy rains from July 23 to 29. Most of the dead were people unexpectedly trapped by rapidly rising waters at a nursing home in Miyun district on the city’s northeastern outskirts. The fatalities led authorities to admit to shortcomings in their contingency plans for extreme weather.
By noon on Monday, Beijing had placed all of its 16 districts on the highest level of preparedness, in the first citywide state of readiness since July 28, shutting parts of the Great Wall and other outdoor leisure venues and halting operations of below-ground businesses.
The risk of flash floods and landslides is “extremely high”, authorities said.
By 2 p.m. (0600 GMT), the capital had relocated more than 70,000 residents – nearly 14,000 of them from the hilly Mentougou district in the city’s west, the state broadcaster reported.
In the summer of 2012, 79 people died in Beijing in the city’s deadliest flooding in living memory, with the Fangshan district the worst-hit.
Beijing’s topography has been described by some as a rain “trap”, with its mountains to the west and north capturing moist air and amplifying any ensuing rainfall as a result.
WELLNESS RETREAT
As of Saturday, torrential rains that swept through “Beijing Valley”, a riverside wellness retreat in the Hebei city of Chengde adjacent to Beijing, had claimed three lives, with four still missing, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported.
Around 40 people had gathered on July 27 for an event at the site, where organisers directed them into tents pitched on low-lying land next to a river bend, Caixin Media reported.
By 2 a.m. the next morning, floodwaters had risen to knee height, forcing attendees to scramble towards the camp’s only exit.
The site bore similarities to Camp Mystic in Texas, where at least 28 children were swept to their deaths last month by floodwaters after the Guadalupe River burst its banks amid torrential rain.
In China’s southern Guangdong province over the weekend, the bodies of five people were recovered after a large-scale search operation involving more than 1,300 rescuers.
The five people, who went missing on Friday night, were swept away by water following heavy rainfall in recent days, Xinhua reported on Sunday.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Joe Cash; Editing by Stephen Coates, Michael Perry and Helen Popper)
