More than 10,000 villagers in Jizhou District of north China's Tianjin Municipality were evacuated to safety, as torrential rains battered the metropolis from Sunday to Tuesday, triggering a red alert for heavy rainfall -- the highest level in China's four-tier weather warning system.
By Monday afternoon, Jizhou District recorded an average rainfall of 92.7 millimeters, with the heaviest precipitation reaching 252.6 millimeters in Changzhou Village, Xiaying Town.
The downpour triggered the most severe mountain flood in 50 years -- and the largest since hydrological records began 70 years ago -- flooding 13 villages along the Juhe River.
To prevent potential landslides and mudslides during the night, local authorities evacuated the over 10,000 residents from five high-risk villages, including Xiaying and Zhongying.
In Xiaying Village, firefighters saved an elderly resident trapped at home as floodwaters rapidly rose. The man had clung to the window's security bars for safety.
After reaching the trapped person, a rescuer guided the elderly resident through the floodwater using a life ring, while manually clearing debris to prevent possible injury. As a result, the elderly was successfully evacuated to safety.
"We are exerting all efforts to conduct emergency rescue and disaster relief operations, prioritizing the safety of people's lives. We have adopted various evacuation methods, including encouraging people to temporarily move to the homes of their relatives or friends and organizing centralized resettlement, racing against time to evacuate residents from threatened areas. At the resettlement sites, we have provided essential supplies such as bedding, food, and drinking water to ensure basic living needs for the evacuees," said Wang Hongwei, head of the emergency management bureau of Jizhou District.
The heavy downpour also caused outages across eight power lines in the district. In response, the local power company deployed over 160 repair personnel, 65 repair vehicles, 18 generators, and 14 emergency power trucks to conduct repair.
As of 17:00 on Tuesday, electricity had been restored to 24 villages. Power supply restoration efforts are also going on in other affected areas.
"Currently, based on the situation on the ground, we have formulated a plan to restore power supply, and we expect to fully resume electricity supply in the areas under our jurisdiction soon," said Xu Lu, an employee with the State Grid Tianjin Jizhou Power Company.
Over 10,000 people evacuated as torrential rains lash north China's Tianjin
Over 10,000 people evacuated as torrential rains lash north China's Tianjin
