Residents of Miyun District stood dismayed and powerless alongside streets reshaped by a devastating night time of rain.
This northeastern suburb of Beijing, China’s sprawling capital, suffered a minimum of 28 deaths.
Its streets and small hamlets bear the marks of being ripped by means of by a torrent of water.
One residential space we go to continues to be submerged.
Some folks wade into what’s left of their houses, rising with muddied suitcases carrying any possessions they will salvage.
Others, like Mrs Feng, are unable to succeed in their buildings and might solely speculate about what they may discover when the water subsides.
“It’s a disaster from heaven,” she says, “it can’t be helped, it just happened.”
She tells us one of many tales starting to flow into concerning the determined occasions that befell simply hours earlier than, saying one man “died holding his wife”.
“His spouse was already lifeless, however the water stored coming into the home. For about an hour, he held a beam of the home with one hand, holding his spouse with one other.
“He couldn’t hold on anymore, he let his hand go for one second and he was washed away.”
As we discuss, bulldozers strategically dump sand alongside the street to handle the movement of the water, and an enormous winch-truck begins transferring one of many many smashed automobiles littering the road.
Across the nook, outfitted solely with a small bucket to bail water out from his yard, Mr Dong describes a terrifying night time.
“My two cars floated away,” he mentioned, “I put two thick trees by the gate but they floated away.
“If me and my spouse did not climb as much as the roof, it will be over for us. The water was as excessive as my neck.”
He appears to be like forlorn and exhausted as he reveals us by means of the wreckage of his residence.
The ground is now fully thick mud, whereas home equipment and furnishings lie tangled and damaged in the course of rooms.
As we had pushed into Miyun from central Beijing, we noticed a number of sections of the riverbank that had been breached.
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In a single small, inaccessible valley, solely the tops of buildings – and what gave the impression to be the rear finish of a lorry – had been seen above the water.
It was lucky that rain, forecast to fall proper by means of Tuesday, appeared to not come.
As an alternative, the baking solar of the Beijing summer time returned, whereas rescue operations continued and the neighborhood ready for the even greater activity of rebuilding.
