Mud-Filled Homes and Washed-Out Roads: The Human Cost of Beijing’s Record Rainfall

Forty-three year-old Yan Ping, wading barefoot in brown sludge as she spoke to Reuters on Tuesday (July 29), said she had never seen a flood, let alone such a severe one, in the more than two decades she has lived in the Beijing suburb of Miyun.

“The elderly were crying out of fear, and the kids too,” she said, recalling the moment she entered her devastated one-storey home, in which a newly purchased fridge had tipped over and a shovel was ready to be put to work.

Heavy rains began last Wednesday (July 23) and peaked around Beijing and its surrounding provinces on Monday (July 28), with Miyun experiencing rainfall of up to 573.5 mm (22.6 inches) — levels that local media described as "extremely destructive."

The average annual rainfall in Beijing is around 600 mm (23.6 inches).

Yan pointed to a washing machine still filled with muddy water, indicating that the floodwaters had at one point reached the top of the drum.

Bed, television, refrigerator, and wardrobe were all soaked with floodwater.

“Just forget about the white ones,” she said as she pulled white clothes out from the bottom of the wardrobe.

Yan said the only thing she could say to console herself was that at least her family was all alive.

Extreme weather has killed at least 30 people in Beijing after a year's worth of rain fell in less than a week, forcing the relocation of more than 80,000, damaging roads and cutting off power and communications in more than 130 villages.

Workers were seen clearing up felled trees and debris that clogged a road that joined two sides of Qingshui river near a village in Miyun.

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