The Taishitun Town Elderly Care Center in the Miyun district, one of the hardest hit areas of Beijing this week, was the site of 31 fatalities, according to officials on Thursday.
The Communist Party secretary for Miyun, Yu Weiguo, expressed his condolences and said it was a “bitter lesson,” noting that the senior center had been in the town’s center for a while and was safe.
According to Yu, “This demonstrated that our contingency plan had shortcomings and that our understanding of extreme weather was insufficient.”
69 people were residing in the care center, of which 55 were functionally disabled. According to local media outlet Caixin, the facility was perched on low-lying ground close to a river that had flooded after the unusually heavy rains.
Torrential rains started a week ago, peaking on Monday in Beijing and the provinces that surround it.
Rainfall totaling up to 573.5mm (22.6 inches) fell in the hilly Miyun district in the northeast of the capital in just a few days. In Beijing, the average annual precipitation is around 600mm (23. 6 inches).
The largest reservoir in northern China, the Miyun Reservoir, experienced record-breaking water levels during the rains.
When the disaster struck, Yu said, the Qingshui River, a normal small stream that flows through Taishitun and enters the reservoir, was flowing at 1,500 times its normal volume.
Caixin reported that the 87-year-old mother of a Beijing resident was able to leave the elder care facility in Miyun.
The woman’s daughter cited her mother’s roommate’s inability to escape and drown, noting that she managed to climb onto the windowsill.
Taus of thousands of people have been affected.
At least 44 people have died in Beijing over the past week, according to Beijing’s deputy mayor Xia Linmao at a news conference on Thursday.
More than 24 000 homes, 242 bridges, and 756 kilometers of roads have been damaged as a result of the rain and flooding in the capital, according to Xia, citing preliminary data.
Authorities in the Hebei province that are neighboring announced an additional eight deaths on Thursday and 16 deaths overall this week.
According to authorities, Beijing and Hebei province have at least 31 missing people.
Authorities in northern Shanxi province reported on Wednesday evening that 10 people had died after a minibus carrying farm workers had sat in heavy rain.
Three days after the bus went missing, a statement from the city government stated that four people were still missing as the rescue effort progressed.
Source: Aljazeera
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