Weeks of intense rain have caused severe floods that washed away buildings and taking lives in China. Over 8,000 houses were torn down and 78 people have lost their lives or remain missing since June.
By ZHAO Meng
Skies darkened, thunder rolled, lightning flashed. The China Meteorological Administration warned of billions of tons of water falling from the skies, swelling rivers and lakes, and bringing untold misery to millions. The alert was finally lifted after a month on July 3 but warned that torrential rain in Southwest China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River would return on the next day.
Weeks of intense rain have washed away many lives and destroyed countless dwellings. Over 8,000 houses have disappeared in the floods. The families and friends of 78 victims drown in grief.
Of those who have been lost, 22 were caught by a flash flood in Mianning County in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province on June 26, mostly from the small town of Yihai.
The deadly torrent swept huge rocks and tree trunks down the Caogu river, demolishing houses destroying farmland.
Local party officials are in charge of monitoring 15 locations prone to rock-mud flows and landslides in Yihai. Mayor Xiao Peng who helped to evacuate residents from villages was trapped on a highway all night by the rising water.
Five days after the tragedy, Xiao shared his thoughts with Jiemian News.
The county has a precipitation monitoring system that sends text messages to us whenever the rainfall reaches a threshold. That night, I got several messages. The initial blue alert soon became red.
Yihai stretches 37 kilometers from north to south. The rain started in the north at around 6:30 pm and soon the whole town was soaked, especially the villages in the south. The rain stopped for a while around 9 pm but started again a couple of hours later. The flash flood broke after midnight.
We went out to do what we could around 6:30 pm. Later, the problems seemed to be concentrated in Caogu Village in the south. It wasn’t just me, other town officials, the party secretary and the vice mayor were with me. We arrived at Caogu at 11 pm and split up into rescue parties. The electricity had been out since 9pm. We could hardly see. There was water everywhere, still rising.
We stuck to our plan to take people to an emergency evacuation point. The village cadres were running about sounding the alarm, making noise any way they could, shouting and banging gongs.
We managed to get 4,000 people out, but it was impossible to know who, if anyone, might be missing. With no professional equipment at all, we drove to people’s houses where we could. Most villagers followed us out. Some carried those who needed help out on their shoulders.
Caogu village is actually two hamlets, Damawu and Dabaozi. I was organizing the rescue in Damawu, and when headed to Dabaozi on the national highway, the water was too high to pass. When we turned around, the water had risen behind us and we were marooned. It was too dark to risk driving through the water. When the water finally ebbed a little, it was already dawn.
A family of five, a couple and their three children perished in the flood. I wasn’t there at the scene. The village cadres were shouting again and again with loudspeakers, asking people to leave. A rescuer named Deng said he had asked everyone to evacuate by 8:40 pm by sending them WeChat messages, but some didn’t reply, including the lost family. He called them at 9:35 pm, but no one answered so he went to knock on the door. All he could hear was the drumming of the pitiless rain. A villager who abandoned her home around 11 pm saw the family’s house surrounded with water. She shouted, but again, no one answered.
I learned about the missing people the next day. It was heartbreaking. I have been working in Mianning for over four years and never encountered such devastation. The main reason for the losses was the severity of the weather. Levees that should have shielded the village were destroyed as the water descended onto the village. There were so many people in the village, and the flood offered us little time. It has been a long time since such a flood, and I have to say, some of the villagers were not as ready as they should have been, but perhaps neither were we.
The riverbank on one side is higher, so maybe in 2018, they didn’t think it was necessary to build embankments on both sides. I only became mayor in 2019 so I’m not aware of the specific details.
Jiemian News spoke to Zhao Tianwei, the previous mayor. Zhao said the county didn’t have enough money to build on both sides. A proposal to Sichuan Two Sessions (the annual budgeting and law-making session) to build flood defenses on both sides of the river fell on deaf ears. With limited funding, only one side of the river was built up. Zhao said the government planned to dredge the river every year.
Despite some being only a few years old, the levees on both sides of the river are clearly not fit for purpose, Xiao continued. During the disaster, there were both telecommunications and power failures. We had flashlights, but many villagers didn’t. It was raining so hard that without light, they didn’t know which way to go.
The flood season usually lasts from May to October. Between two and four people from each village monitor the hazard points. The villagers all live downhill in hazardous areas, so they patrol regularly and fully understand the importance of their work. The most dangerous areas are often gullies, which can easily be seen from below. There is no need or point to climbing up in most cases, with one exception.
One point receives special attention. There is a crack in the mountain slope and once mudflow hits that crack, it could trigger a huge collapse of the hillside. Four villagers monitor the spot much more closely living in a tent for a week at a time on the mountain top. They also have some professional equipment
Many people are living in emergency tents after the disaster. For those whose houses remain intact within the safe zone, we will help them with the clean-up and they will be able to return home within a week. For the rest, we will find them apartments and pay their rent until they get back on their feet.
