When the rains started, residents in Taishitun were not overly worried. The rural township, about 70 miles northeast of central Beijing, sits on a plain far from mountains that could generate mudslides and had no recent history of flooding.
Though it is near the convergence of three rivers, the closest is about a quarter of a mile away and feeds into a massive reservoir downstream.
So it came as a shock when that river, the Qingshui, suddenly burst through its flood banks in the early hours of July 28, sending torrents of water through the streets. Residents ran outside, yelling at their neighbors to wake up, and scrambled onto rooftops.
One of the first buildings to be inundated was the Taishitun Elderly Care Center. Inside, 55 of the 69 residents were either fully or partially incapacitated and dependent on the eight workers there that day to move. The one-story nursing home was soon submerged in six feet of water.
Firefighters arrived around 7 a.m. but were overpowered by currents that, at their peak, were flowing faster than the Niagara Falls. They began rescue operations only three hours later. Footage on Chinese state media showed rescue workers with ropes, swimming into the nursing home to reach people clinging to windowsills. But many of the residents had already perished. In total, 31 people died — a toll that shocked the capital and beyond.
“To be honest, no one expected this. And it’s not just common people. Our village has people over the age of 70, even over 80, and they have never seen such bad weather since they were children,” said Cai Xiaokui, 49, who is from the same area, Putaoyuan village, as the nursing home.
As the country braces for more extreme and unpredictable weather caused by climate change, the disaster in the Miyun District of Beijing also has exposed what local officials admitted were “flaws” in emergency planning. City officials issued a rare apology and this week called for all flood prevention and disaster relief measures to be “unremittingly implemented.”
As global temperatures rise, shifting ocean currents are causing more rainfall in China’s typically arid north. A report released in June by China’s Ecology and Environment Ministry said precipitation in northern China last year was 83 percent higher than the average between 1991 and 2020.
The recent floods in Beijing and neighboring Hebei Province — which killed at least 60 people and displaced more than 80,000 people — mark the fifth time the region has been hit by extreme rains in the last 15 years.
Across China, the number of flash floods has at least doubled compared with a stretch before the year 2000, according to a recent analysis by Guangtao Fu, a professor at the University of Exeter focusing on water systems.
Mass floods in the capital in 2012, 2016 and 2023 were concentrated in the south. But this year, the rains struck to the north, where residents and officials were less prepared.
Before the floods hit, it had rained for five days straight, with some areas of Miyun pounded by nearly a year’s worth of precipitation. The heavy downpour in Miyun, as well as upstream in the Ganyu Valley, caused the Qingshui River to surge to record levels. By the morning of July 28, the river’s rate of flow was 1,500 times its normal level.
That torrent surged into Taishitun, taking out trees and cars, and sped downstream to the Miyun Reservoir, which had already risen to its highest level since it was built in the 1960s. The authorities had issued a red alert, the highest level, 48 hours earlier — but no particular instructions to evacuate.
After the deaths at the nursing home, Beijing officials held a news conference where they issued the apology and acknowledged that more than 16,000 people in Miyun had been evacuated, with officials going door to door in some areas — but not to the nursing home.
“For a long time, the town center where the nursing home is was safe” said Yu Weiguo, secretary of the Miyun District Committee. “That shows flaws in our contingency plan and that our understanding of extreme weather is not enough,” Mr. Yu said before he and other officials bowed their heads in a moment of silence.
China’s Meteorological Administration said two days after the deaths that accurate forecasting of such extreme weather is still a “global problem” and that the agency would work on “strengthening” its early warning capabilities.
In a country where many families wrestle with how to care for their aging relatives, the deaths in Miyun have touched a nerve. On social media, commentators posted videos calling for an overhaul of nursing home safety or for citizens to take better care of their parents.
“The Miyun incident shows the failure of disaster response that relies on past experience,” Lu Jingsheng, a professor at the School of Business at Renmin University of China wrote in an article published on WeChat. “A civilized society must uphold its responsibility to vulnerable groups.”
After the previous floods, officials in Beijing updated urban drainage and added pumping systems to low-lying areas to funnel water away, according to Ma Jun, an environmentalist and the founder of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.
“This time there’s still some very hard lessons,” Mr. Ma said. “Obviously, the monitoring still has gaps. The early warning forecast is still not as accurate as we would like to see.”
The Qingshui, like many rivers in northern China, has been dredged and modified for better flood control. But experts say adding flood walls or channeling rivers between concrete embankments — China’s traditional method of flood prevention — has made such disasters worse because the surrounding area is less able to absorb the water.
“We need to make the ground permeable. We need to remove all the concrete,” said Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University. “We need to change, but engineers keep building higher and higher flood walls.”
Floods in the northwestern province of Gansu have killed 15 people, officials said on Saturday, prompting China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to order all-out efforts to try to rescue more than 30 people still missing.
After the floods receded in Putaoyuan, residents complained of the stench of dead fish and dead animals. The insides of people’s homes were covered in mud. Still some praised the rescue efforts by their neighbors.
A group of men in the village had used front-end loaders to ferry residents from their rooftops to safety or to guide emergency workers on inflatable boats. Mr. Cai, who runs a guesthouse in the village, offered rescue workers free accommodation. He said that in the aftermath of the floods, local restaurants have not been charging residents for meals.
“That feeling of solidarity is really strong,” he said. “You know, normally neighbors might have little disagreements, but when something this big happens, people really aren’t selfish at all.”
Xinyun Wu contributed reporting from Taipei.
Lily Kuo is a China correspondent for The Times, reporting from Taipei.
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