At least 40 people have died in Beijing after severe flooding struck the Chinese capital following days of heavy rain across northern China, officials reported Tuesday. The majority of fatalities occurred in Miyun, a hilly northern suburb, where 80,000 residents were evacuated, power was lost in 130 surrounding villages, and many areas became isolated as roads flooded and turned impassable. Two deaths were also reported in Yanqing, another northern district of the city.
Elsewhere, eight people were killed in a landslide in Chengde, located about 140 miles northeast of Beijing, after six months’ worth of rain fell over the weekend, with four individuals still missing. In Shanxi Province, southwest of Beijing, rescuers recovered the body of a passenger from a bus that went missing on Sunday, but the bus and 13 other passengers remain unaccounted for. As more heavy rain was forecast for Tuesday evening, President Xi Jinping urged an “all-out” search and rescue operation to find those missing. He emphasized the need to relocate residents in affected areas and minimize casualties as much as possible.
Meanwhile, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu provinces, and Shanghai were placed under a Level IV emergency alert ahead of typhoon Co-May, which is currently located about 300 miles southeast of Shanghai in the East China Sea and moving at roughly 9 mph. The typhoon is expected to strengthen and bring heavy rain as it approaches landfall between Zhoushan and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province on Wednesday, with a possible second landfall near Shanghai’s Pudong or Fengxian districts.
Southern China was also impacted, with Hong Kong experiencing intense rainfall exceeding four inches per hour, prompting school closures, landslide warnings, and partial subway shutdowns. In contrast, much of the rest of the country faced heat alerts with temperatures forecast to surpass 40 degrees Celsius over the next week.
