China Floods Displace 1.65 Million People

People ride on the front of a loader to cross a flooded street following a heavy rain that
NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images
Gabrielle Reyes

The Chinese government relocated 1.65 million people from areas at high risk of floods in eastern China’s Zhejiang province as of Sunday night, China’s state-run Global Times reported Monday.

“The province has sent rescue teams to transfer residents from risky areas to emergency shelters as it upgraded its typhoon emergency response to level 1. As of Sunday night, more than 1.65 million residents have been transferred,” according to the newspaper.

“As Typhoon In-Fa made its second landfall on the coast of Pinghua, East China’s Zhejiang Province, on Monday morning, China’s National Meteorological Center (NMC) said it is estimated that Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu Province and other East China areas may be hit by strong winds, rain and storm tides,” the Global Times reported.

“Enough water to fill about 37 West Lakes poured into Yuyao, Zhejiang over the past three days as In-Fa made landfall twice along the coast of Pinghu at about 9:50 am, packing winds of up to 28 meters per second near its center,” the newspaper reported separately on July 26.

“Such amount of rainfall is roughly equal to the total water amount in about 37 ‘West Lakes,’ the scenic spot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang with an area of 6.38 square kilometers and a storage capacity of 14 million cubic meters of water,” the Global Times explained.

“[T]he cumulative rainfall at Dingjiafan station in Yuyao reached 951 millimeters from 8:00 am on Thursday [July 22] to 6:00 am on Monday [July 26] breaking the rainfall record for a typhoon landing at a single station in Zhejiang,” according to Zhejiang’s provincial meteorological station.

“In Shanghai, the degree of rainfall in 30 rainfall observation stations reached that of heavy torrential rain, accounting for about 4.6 percent among a total of 654 stations in the city,” according to local weather officials.

Shanghai is a Chinese direct-administered municipality bordering Zhejiang province to its northeast. The port city is home to roughly 28 million people and is China’s most populous urban area and the most populous city proper on Earth.

The torrential rainfall in eastern China comes as China’s central Henan province continues to recover from record flooding last week that killed at least 69 people according to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) estimates on Monday. Henan’s flooding ravaged its capital city of Zhengzhou, home to 12.5 million people, suggesting the province’s true death toll is likely much higher than official CCP estimates.

“[T]he flood situation [in Henan] remains severe,” the information office of the Henan provincial government told reporters at a press conference on July 26.

“More than 12.9 million people have been affected by the latest round of downpours,” Henan’s information office further revealed.

“A total of 933,800 residents in Henan have been relocated to safer places, and about 972,000 hectares of crops damaged,” the office added.

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