Subway submerged, neighborhoods submerged: 25 people were killed by the bad weather which struck the center of China, in particular the city of Zhengzhou where the flooded avenues and the wrecks of piled cars testified Wednesday July 21 of the violence of the flood.
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Extremely serious
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floods
by President Xi Jinping's own admission, although the country is regularly a victim in summer of climatic hazards.
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About 200,000 of the ten million residents of Zhengzhou, 700 km south of Beijing, which received the equivalent of nearly a year of rain in three days, have been evacuated, local officials said. .
The pipes were quickly blocked and the arteries of the capital of Henan province turned into torrents of mud.
Public television CCTV on Wednesday broadcast footage of residents of Zhengzhou trapped the day before on the roadway, pushing their vehicles with water up to their waists.
Social networks showed pedestrians surprised by the chaos and carried away by the force of the current.
This city was placed on red alert on Tuesday, the highest level for weather in China.
But due to a late announcement and the maintenance of public transport, many of its residents went to work.
Twelve people died in the metro
The situation appeared most dramatic in the Zhengzhou metro.
Passengers were left with shoulder-deep water and several witnesses reported panic gripped those stuck in different oars.
A real tide invading the deserted quay of a station was seen on video footage.
A man said that rescuers opened the roof of a wagon to allow the evacuation, one by one, of the travelers.
Hundreds of passengers were thus extracted unharmed from the metro, the municipal authorities assured.
But twelve people died there and five were injured.
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On Wednesday, some traffic lanes were still flooded.
Below a road bridge in the city center, at the entrance of a tunnel, several dozen abandoned cars lay side by side or stacked.
Dozens of residents of Zhengzhou, in T-shirts, shorts, some with headlamps or having turned on the flashlight function of their smartphone to light up the scene, went to see the damage.
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It's impressive,
" said Liu Chang, 29, accompanied by her parents.
The heaviest rains in 60 years
In the neighboring town of Gongyi and its surroundings, the bad weather caused landslides, the official China New news agency said.
Houses and walls collapsed there, at least four people lost their lives.
The total toll of bad weather stands at 25 dead and seven missing, local authorities told reporters on Wednesday.
The damage is estimated at 542 million yuan (71 million euros) throughout Henan.
According to authorities, the rains in the region were the heaviest on record since meteorological phenomena began to be compiled 60 years ago.