Credit: Weibo
Subway passengers were trapped in shoulder-high floodwater when flash flooding occurred in central China on Tuesday, July 20.
There are horrific pictures of passengers in the city of Zhengzhou clinging to ceiling handles inside flooded trains on Tuesday, following the influx of floodwater into the subway after an unusually heavy rainstorm.
Many were rescued, while more than a dozen lives were lost.
Unverified footage on social media appeared to show dead bodies on trains and in stations.
Some pictures showed water levels rising as high as the neck of some passengers.
Aljazeera put the casualty figure at 12, with five injured and hundreds rescued.
“The water reached my chest,” a survivor wrote on social media. “I was really scared, but the most terrifying thing was not the water, but the increasingly diminishing air supply in the carriage.”
According to South China Morning Post, at least 18 people have died. 12 people died when their subway train was hit with rapidly rising floodwaters on Tuesday night. Two people were also killed when a wall collapsed on them.
Nearly a year’s worth of rain was said to have fallen in just three days in what is described as the heaviest rainfall in decades.
Entire neighbourhoods were left underwater and cars were swept away due to the flooding.
A historic Shaolin Temple just north of the city, a tourist spot known for its Buddhist monks and their martial arts skills, was also left submerged.
More than 10,000 residents of Henan province were moved to shelters, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
