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Dannie Peng

The official death toll from storms in Beijing has risen to 44, with Chinese officials saying on Thursday that 31 people died in a flooded nursing home.
Beijing vice-mayor Xia Linmao said the nursing home was in the mountainous outlying district of Miyun, where 37 people in all have died in the storms over the past week.
The home was built in 2021 in Taishitun township upstream of the Miyun Reservoir, and offers residential care for the severely disabled, orphaned, elderly and low-income residents.
Miyun Communist Party boss Yu Weiguo said 77 people, including 55 who were either fully or partially incapacitated, were in the home when water poured into the surrounding area and submerged it.
Emergency workers were quick to respond, Yu said, but the fast-moving water made rescue efforts extremely challenging. Search and rescue operations of the centre continued into the following day, during which many elderly people died, according to Yu.


Yu said that more than 16,000 people in Miyun had evacuated in advance, but the nursing home was in an area that had long been considered safe. It was not seen as in a high-risk zone and so people in the facility were not included in the evacuation plan.
“This shows that our emergency plan had flaws and that our understanding of extreme weather was insufficient,” he said.


Xia also acknowledged weaknesses in the city’s extreme weather warning and contingency planning systems, which led to significant losses and casualties in this disaster.
“We are deeply saddened and remorseful,” he said.
Yu said a preliminary count indicated that 162 villages in 17 towns across the district had been affected, with damage to more than 31,000 houses, 6,994 vehicles and 10 roads.

The rain and flooding has also affected neighbouring Hebei province, although no official provincial figures have been released.
Emergency workers were searching for four people missing in Luanping county in Hebei after a landslide killed eight people on Monday.
Heavy rainfall in Xinglong county, also in Hebei, claimed eight lives on Wednesday, and rescuers were searching for 18 missing people.
The wet weather has affected large parts of northern China since July 23, inundating Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin, as well as the northeastern province of Liaoning and the eastern coastal province of Shandong.

State media said the disaster had caused heavy casualties and property losses, and videos of flooding and landslides, as well as rescue efforts, have been circulating on social media.
Online posts show houses submerged and destroyed, with debris embedded in the mud or drifting in floodwaters.
On social media, a commenter from Hebei said vegetable greenhouses and homes were submerged up to their roofs, and some villagers in the mountains had died and many others were trapped.
Another resident wrote that because of damaged roads and bridges, as well as disrupted communications and power supplies, several villages and towns in Hebei had become “isolated islands”.


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31 die in Chinese nursing home as Beijing flood death toll rises to 44

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Official says facility was not evacuated because it was considered to be in a safe zone


Official says facility was not evacuated because it was considered to be in a safe zone.


31 die in Chinese nursing home as Beijing flood death toll rises to 44

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Official says facility was not evacuated because it was considered to be in a safe zone

Official says facility was not evacuated because it was considered to be in a safe zone