Beijing
(AsiaNews) - The residents of Beijing reacted with fury after a torrential
downpour - the heaviest in 61 years - killed 37 people, with seven others still
missing. The
comments of people on blogs and those of experts accuse the city government for
failing to modernize the sewage system, even though the capital has become a
metropolis with 20 million inhabitants.
By
this morning at least 9 million people posted comments on Sina Weibo, the
"Facebook" of China, accusing the government of not having given any
official warning and lack of maintenance of the sewer system.
The
rain fell uninterruptedly for 16 hours, from July 21, Saturday afternoon until
the early hours of the next day. Some
areas of the city were under water, which came to about one meter in height; traffic
tunnels were flooded, creating traffic problems, several houses collapsed; at
the airport 500 flights were canceled, stranding at least 80 thousand
passengers. At least 66
thousand people were evacuated from their homes.
The
death toll is severe: 25 people drowned, six died in the collapse of their
home, five were killed by electric shock from collapsed light poles, a person
was struck dead by lightning.
Many
motorists were trapped in their cars, unable to get out of them because of flooding,
emergency crews had to dive into the sea of mud to try to open the manhole
covers and drain the water.
The
Beijing-Guangzhou highway, towards the south is still flooded, creating traffic
problems.
Some
of the criticism of Beijing residents are unfair: the Met Office warned that in
northern China (and Beijing), heavy rains were coming; personnel had been
placed at the entrance of the approximately 100 subways that risked flooding. The
government attempted to defned itself revealing that at least 4 trillion Yuan
has been spent on modernizing the infrastructure of the city. But
people wonder how much of that 4 trillion was spent on upgrading the sewer
network. Beijing,
in fact, is flooded every year when it rains, even when the downpour is less
intense.
According
to some experts, the great building boom that is transforming Beijing has
completely ignored the issue of sewers for the nearly 20 billion people living
in the metropolis. Much
of the drainage structure dates back to the Ming period of the sixteenth
century!
It
is also a serious problem in other parts of China. The
city of Qingdao (Shandong) prides itself on having one of the most
"modern" sewer-systems, but they date from the early 1900s, when the
city hosted a German concession. And the sewers are the
work of German engineers.
Heavy
rains have caused deaths in other parts of China: in Hebei, three people died
and one is lost, 17 people are missing in Shaanxi, in Sichuan eight people have
drowned due to heavy rains.
According
to initial government data, the torrential rains of recent days have already caused
damage to the tune of 10 billion Yuan.