BEIJING: China deployed military helicopters on Tuesday (Aug 1) to deliver supplies to stranded train passengers in Beijing, state media reported, after deadly rainstorms wreaked havoc in the Chinese capital.
Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, has swept northwards over China since Friday, when it hit southern Fujian province after scything through the Philippines.
Heavy rains began pummelling the city and surrounding areas on Saturday, with nearly the average rainfall for the entire month of July dumped on Beijing in just 40 hours.
At least two people died from floods in Beijing on Monday, while another two casualties were reported in northeastern Liaoning over the weekend.
On Tuesday, a military unit of 26 soldiers and four helicopters launched an “airdrop rescue mission” to deliver hundreds of food packages and ponchos to people stranded in and around a train station in Beijing’s hard-hit Mentougou district, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
“On July 31, areas in Beijing including Fangshan and Mentougou suffered serious damage from water, causing three trains to get trapped on their routes, and road traffic in some areas was completely cut off,” CCTV reported.
The broadcaster was running live images on Tuesday morning of a row of buses half submerged in floodwater in Beijing’s southwest Fangshan neighbourhood.
Around 150,000 households in Mentougou had no running water, the local Communist Party newspaper Beijing Daily said on Tuesday, with 45 water tankers dispatched to offer emergency supplies.
Local media on Monday published footage of chaotic scenes on high-speed rail trains stranded on tracks for as long as 30 hours, with passengers complaining that they had run out of food and water.