Flooding killed 31 residents at a care home for elderly people on the outskirts of Beijing this week, local officials have said.
Footage showed emergency teams wading through chest-high water trying to rescue those trapped in the home in the Miyun District. Many of those who died were reportedly immobile.
Local officials have admitted there were “loopholes in emergency planning” and said the incident was a painful lesson that served as “a wake-up call”.
A total of 44 people have died in the Beijing floods, which have come during a summer of extreme weather across China. Record heatwaves hit the eastern regions earlier this month while separate floods swept the country’s south-west.
About 77 elderly residents were inside the home when the floods hit, trapping about 40 of them as water levels rose to almost 2m (6ft), according to Chinese media.
The facility – situated in Taishitun Town – primarily cares for those who are severely disabled, low-income, or receiving minimal living allowances, local media reports.
“For a long time, the central area of the town where the nursing home is located had been considered safe, so it was not included in the evacuation scope of the plan,” a Chinese official said at a press conference on Thursday.
“This reveals that there are loopholes in our emergency planning. Our understanding of extreme weather has been insufficient, and this painful lesson has served as a wake-up call.”
In nearby Hebei province, 16 people died as a result of extreme rainfall, officials said. In the city of Chengde, eight were killed, with 18 still unaccounted for.
Beijing is no stranger to flooding, particularly in the summer months. One of the deadliest in recent memory occurred in July 2012, when 190mm of rain drenched the city in a day, killing 79 people.
This summer, floods have wreaked havoc across swathes of China.
Two people were killed and 10 people went missing in Shandong province earlier this month when Typhoon Wipha struck eastern China. Two weeks earlier, a landslide killed three people in Ya’an city, in the country’s south-west.
Extreme weather, which experts link to climate change, has increasingly threatened China’s residents and economy – especially its trillion-dollar agriculture sector.
Natural disasters in the first half of the year have cost China 54.11 billion yuan ($7.5bn; £5.7bn), its emergency management ministry said earlier this month. Flooding accounted for more than 90% of the losses, it added.
