The Chinese city of Zhouzhou, with a population over 700,000 and located about fifty miles south of Beijing, flooded following heavy downpours and the failure of multiple nearby levees, but the event that put parts of the city 23 feet underwater was the opening of floodgates on dams to save the Chinese capital, the New York Times reports.
Zhouzhou was one of scores of cities, towns and villages around Beijing that was intentionally flooded by officials to spare Beijing from damage. Officials forced one million people to evacuate with just hours of notice before opening up floodgates and spillways to alleviate the pressure after nearly two-and-a-half feet of rain fell on parts of Beijing over the previous week. Social media chatter on Chinese sites shows people searching for hundreds, if not thousands, of friends and relatives still missing, with many fearing their loved ones did not make it out of the flood zone before officials opened the gates.
A key goal of the plan was to reopen the Beijing Daxing Airport, a massive complex with five runways. By Monday, planes at the airport had to transit through water that covered their landing gear tires, making some of the airport inoperable. “Ensure the absolute safety of key defense targets such as Xiong’an New Area and Beijing Daxing Airport,” Li Guoying, China’s minister of water resources, ordered on Tuesday.