![]() And cities like Zhengzhou and Xinxiang might need to brace for more floods.Ī woman carries home two jugs of drinking water. But climate change might make such rains more common. Scientists say rains like this haven't fallen on Henan province in 60 years. "I have been doing rescue work for six years, but until arriving in Henan, I had never seen a flood as big as this one, that's damaged so much and affected so many," says Xiang Nanmin, the captain of another private team called Blue Skies that brought about 600 people to higher ground over the last three days Over the weekend, rescue teams shifted their focus to northern Henan, where a tributary of the Yellow River had overflowed after a dam upstream was opened to release the floodwaters behind it. Wu is part of an extensive relief and rescue mission deployed by both the Chinese military as well as private groups to inject much-needed food and water into submerged communities and bring flooded residents to temporary evacuation centers. "I am really moved by the resilience of the Chinese people in the face of disaster." "The water was high in some places and low in others, making it impossible for machinery to reach trapped residents, so some members of my team jumped into the flood water without a second thought," he says. Some trains were stuck for days after tracks were flooded, and Zhengzhou briefly cancelled all flights into the region.īy Thursday, Wu was helping organize rafts of inflatable boats to rescue patients stranded inside Zhengzhou's Fuwai Cardiovascular Hospital. To get to the city, rescuers had to overcome waterlogged roads and paralyzed infrastructure. He loaded his car with food, water and rescue gear, and by the next morning, he and dozens of other volunteer members of the private rescue organization, Dawn Emergency Rescue Team, were on their way to Zhengzhou. Wu, a short, jovial businessman with a no-nonsense buzz cut, immediately sprang into action. "I could not help but shake when I got out of the water," he says. He and two other passengers survived by climbing through their vehicles' sunroofs, grabbing onto pipes fixed to the ceiling of the tunnel. "In that moment, I felt incredibly hopeless," Wu Qiang, a driver who was briefly stuck in the tunnel, told Chinese media after his ordeal. At least two passengers never made it out. Several drivers behind them stayed in their cars, believing the pause to be traffic. Nearly 200 cars inside became stuck in several feet of water, then began floating. She made it home, a few hundred feet away, in just over an hour. "Around 20 or so people – male, female, old, and young – were also trying to get home in the storm, so we linked arms, with the front pulling the back row forward, and the back pushing the front onwards," says Wang. Water began rushing into the mile-long tunnel last Tuesday, creating a strong current against which Wang and her son fought to stay upright. ![]() Only a few hundred feet north of Wang's restaurant is the Jingguang traffic tunnel, built in low-lying, formerly swampy land. Much like certain parts of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, Henan has been deluged by unusually slow-moving rain storms this past week, making painfully clear how climate change can exacerbate seasonal rains. Authorities say the rains have displaced more than a million people and at least 63 people dead in what should have been – in theory – once-in-a-thousand-year floods. Starting last Tuesday, storms dropped the equivalent of one year's worth of water on the city in a 72 hour period before moving northward, flooding large swathes of Henan province in China. "We could only hold on to each other," says Wang, a resident of Zhengzhou, the capital city of central Henan province and home to approximately 12 million people. When that didn't work, she grabbed her young son and a broom handle, using it to steady the two of them as they waded through the chin-high floodwaters back home. Inside her restaurant, Wang Ana barricaded the doors in an effort to stop water from seeping in. Then came the rain - for three straight days. XINXIANG, China - First the sky darkened. People ride in the front of a wheel loader to cross a flooded street following heavy rains which caused flooding and claimed the lives of at least 63 people in the city of Zhengzhou in China's Henan province on July 23.
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