Typhoon Doksuri killed 51 people - town drowned when flood water was diverted from Beijing
Thank you for choosing Automatic Translation. Currently we are offering translations from English into French and German, with more translation languages to be added in the near future. Please be aware that these translations are generated by a third party AI software service. While we have found that the translations are mostly correct, they may not be perfect in every case. To ensure the information you read is correct, please refer to the original article in English. If you find an error in a translation which you would like to bring to our attention, it would help us greatly if you let us know. We can correct any text or section, once we are aware of it. Please do not hesitate to contact our webmaster to let us know of any translation errors.
UPDATED August 9:
The death toll from recent flooding in Beijing rose to 33, including five rescuers, and another 18 people are missing, officials said Wednesday August 9, as much of the country's north remains threatened by unusually heavy rainfall.
Original article from August 4th
As the flooding emergency in western Beijing turned deadlier at the beginning of this week, a quick decision to divert water from the capital led to an unexpected disastrous flooding situation in another province, reports the BBC.
The flooding of Beijing was a part of the damage from Typhoon Doksuri, which was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that caused extensive damage in the Philippines, Taiwan island, and mainland China, in late-July 2023.
It killed 57, injured 91 and flooded large areas with water.
The storm waters in the capital of China was taking out bridges, washing away dozens of cars at a time. The decision was made to divert the flood waters away from the capital.
The effect was almost immediate: the pressure came off in the capital, however the water had to take another route, and it wasn´t following the predictions. By Tuesday, it was hitting the town of Zhuozhou in neighbouring Hebei Province with a force the locals had not predicted.
The town was soon cut off from the outside world - buildings became islands and could only be reached by boat, and the residents were without electricity and drinking water.
Emergency teams needed boats to reach people, however with the initial rescue effort focused on Beijing with its much larger population, officials there said they were desperately short of watercraft.
By Wednesday, relief teams arrived. Fire brigade rescue teams in large numbers set up at a staging post onland, and boats were lined up along a road which had become a river. Inflatable craft were being launched and, using outboard motors, they began rescue mission in to the centre of town.
Heavy diggers were also used to rescue people. Even the shovels at the front were packed with rescued residents.
Zhuozhou residents complained on social media that they were not given enough notice to escape, feeling that the 70 million people in the province had been used as a shield to to protect Beijing.
"The problem is that the flood relief system is simply designed this way", claims Wang Weiluo, a Chinese engineer who now lives overseas after criticising China's construction of the Three Gorges Dam.
"China's flood control network has a pecking order of protection giving priority to big important cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, with the lowest order of importance being rural areas. Under China's system, at the bottom are the ordinary people in the city and those in the countryside whose interests are not respected," he said.
Read the entire article about the flooding in Beijing and the Hebei Province
Typhoon Doksuri was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that caused extensive damage in the Philippines, Taiwan island, and mainland China, in late-July 2023. It killed 57, injured 91 and flooded large areas with water.
Out of the 57 dead, 27 people were on board the MB Aya Express and killed when the pump boat capsized.
Floods were reported in 9 out of the Philippines' 17 regions, affecting over 2 million people and forcing over 300 thousand to evacuate.
On Taiwan Island, around 150,000 people across the country lost power. It affected over 724,600 people and 262.3 ha (648 acres) of farmland in Fujian, mainland China.
Doksuri was the strongest typhoon to impact southeastern Fujian province since Typhoon Meranti in 2016, and the most powerful typhoon to strike Fujian since records began in 1950.
In Fujian, the rainfall set records for 24-hour totals, including an accumulation of more than 648 mm (25.5 in), reports Wikipedia.
Illustration Credit:
Satellite image of Typhoon Doksuri at peak intensity off the coast of Luzon on July 25.
Typhoon Doksuri (Egay) of the 2023 Pacific typhoon season near its peak intensity while off the coast of Luzon during the afternoon of July 25, 2023. It had 10-min sustained winds of 175 km/h (110 mph) (JMA) and 1-min sustained winds of 230 km/h (145 mph) (JTWC) and an official minimum central pressure of 935 mbar (27.6 inHg) at the time this image was captured.
By NOAA, VIIRS on NOAA-20 satellite - NOAA View Global Data Explorer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135043457