Flights grounded

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Roughly 525 flights in and out of Beijing Capital International Airport were delayed, leaving around 80,000 travelers stranded. "The airport has undergone a terrible ordeal," said Li Xiaomei, a spokeswoman, who added that the storm had affected traffic in the air and on the ground.

The Airport Express line was suspended at 7:50 on Saturday evening because the water covering the tracks resulted in a power outage. Services resumed at 10:20 pm.

Cai Dongyi, from Longquan township in the Mentougou district of Beijing, walks through a pile of rubble.[Photo/China Daily]

Taxi services were also severely affected, leaving a critical shortage at the airport. "We allocated 170 airport buses to ferry passengers away from the airport overnight. The airport has never put such a great number of buses into service before," said Li.

"For those who stayed in the terminals overnight, we prepared water and blankets. The shops and restaurants remained open around the clock," she said.

Operations at the airport returned to normal on Sunday morning.

"In the next two days, we will arrange 211 additional flights," said Li, who added that the airport was expected to handle 1,730 flights on Sunday alone.

"My flight from Chengdu to Beijing was scheduled for 4:25 pm on Saturday. However, after I got my boarding pass, I was told it would be postponed until 6 pm because of the thunderstorm in Beijing," said one passenger, Lu Yuanming. However, the plane still couldn't take off at 6 pm. At 7 pm, more than 200 passengers were taken to hotels close to the airport.

Lu thought he would be able to catch his plane on Sunday morning. However, he was told that it had been cancelled and that the next available flight would be in the late afternoon. Meanwhile, trains in and out of the capital were also delayed. The Y595 from Beijing to Laiyuan in Hebei province was stranded at the tourist resort of Shidu for more than 10 hours, according to staff at the Railway Administration of Beijing.

Government

"Faced with the heaviest rainfall in 61 years, Beijing launched its emergency plan. We have every confidence that we have the ability to tackle the storm and to minimize the effects of the deluge," said Guo Jinlong, mayor of Beijing, quoted on CCTV.

As a megatropolis, Beijing is a combination of old and new, he said. The storm proved that the city's infrastructure facilities are still weak. "We will continue to update our emergency plans, improve the construction of infrastructure facilities, upgrade our ability to mobilize rescue staff and promote people's safety awareness in the future," he said.

Meanwhile, the central government has transferred a relief fund of 120 million yuan ($19 million) - mainly to finance flood control work and repair damaged infrastructure - to Beijing, the municipality of Tianjin and Hebei province, the three heaviest-hit areas, which suffered heavy damage during the storm.

Those measures are likely to be needed as more rains are expected to hit the capital on Wednesday and Thursday.

Contact the writers at hena@chinadaily.com.cn and caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn

Tan Zongyang and Huang Zhiling contributed to this story.

A villager in the Mentougou district of Beijing cleans mud off his clothes after a storm swept the city on July 21.[Photo/China Daily]

 

Cars edge through the floods near a subway station in the Chaoyang district of Beijing on the evening of July 21.[Photo/China Daily]