China floods: Army blows up dam as death toll rises | China

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China’s military has demolished a levee to release water threatening one of its most populous provinces, as the death toll from widespread flooding rose to at least 25 and was expected to rise further.

The dam was implemented late Tuesday night near Luoyang City, as severe floods swept through Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, trapping residents in a subway system and stranding schools, apartments and offices.

Provincial officials told a news conference on Wednesday evening that seven more people were missing.

The death toll is expected to rise on Thursday as rescue work continues in the stricken area as a year’s worth of rain – 640 mm (25 inches) – fell in the area in just three days.

Chinese media said the rainfall was unprecedented in the past “1,000 years”. Some worry that given the scale of the damage, post-disaster reconstruction will be particularly difficult for one of China’s most populous provinces. Zhengzhou alone is home to 12 million people and preliminary estimates indicate that 1.2 million were directly affected by the floods.

A video posted by the ‘The Paper’ news website on Twitter showed subway commuters standing in chest-high muddy brown water as torrential rain erupted in the tunnel outside.

Residents wade through flood waters in Zhengzhou. Photo: Stringer/Reuters

Transportation and work were disrupted across the county, as rain turned streets into fast-flowing rivers, washing cars and spilling into people’s homes.

At least 10 trains carrying about 10,000 passengers, including three trains, have been stopped for more than 40 hours, according to Caixin business news magazine. The Ministry of Transport said on its social media account that parts of 26 highways were closed due to rain.

The power outage shut down respirators at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, forcing staff to use manually-pumped airbags to help patients breathe, according to the city’s Communist Party Committee. She added that more than 600 patients were transferred to other hospitals.

The Henann Business Daily reported that a woman on a subway in a flooded tunnel told her husband that water almost reached her neck and that passengers were having trouble breathing.

Flood waters inundated cars in Zhengzhou. Photo: VCG / Visual China Group / Getty Images

She added that workers at a subway station told her husband that all passengers had been evacuated, but they admitted that was not the case after he started a video chat with his wife on his mobile phone showing that she was still on board.

The exact times and locations of the deaths and disappearances were not immediately clear, though the county said more than 100,000 people had been evacuated to safety.

Henan Province – which lies between Beijing and Shanghai in central China – has many cultural sites and is a major base for industry and agriculture. It intersects with multiple watercourses, many of which are connected to the Yellow River, which has a long history of bursting its banks during periods of heavy rainfall.

On Wednesday, state media showed water at waist height as the rain continued. To the north of Zhengzhou, the famous Shaolin Temple, known for Buddhist monks’ mastery of martial arts, was also badly damaged.

China routinely experiences floods during the summer, but the growth of cities and the diversion of farmland into subdivisions have exacerbated the impact of such events. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has sent a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, “to convey his sincerity. My condolences for the tragic loss of life and destruction,” a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday.

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