At a Glance
- At least 12 people died in a subway system.
- Neighborhoods were covered in waist-high water.
- One city received its entire average annual rainfall in 72 hours.
The death toll from flooding in central China rose to 33 Thursday, as rescuers ferried to safety residents stranded in neighborhoods still covered in waist-high water, mud and debris.
"We bring out the elderly, pregnant women and children first," one volunteer told Reuters.
Many have been trapped in highrise apartments in the city of Zhengzhou for days with no water or electricity. One rescue worker said his team had taken about 1,000 people from a neighborhood on Wednesday.
"Some of them don't want to come out if they have food," the rescuer said. "Because when they do come out, there's no place for them to go. But those without food would come out willingly."
People were also stranded in offices and hotels, as well as homes outside the city.
(WATCH: Woman Clings to Car in China’s Devastating Flooding)
Over 30 inches of rain fell in 72 hours across a section of central China, creating deadly torrents of floodwaters that trapped people in subways and buildings and left cars floating down roadways.
At least 33 people were killed and more than 100,000 forced from their homes, according to the Associated Press. At least eight people were reported missing.
The worst of the flooding appears to be in Zhengzhou, a city of 12 million people in Henan province, several hundred miles south of Beijing.
By Thursday, the weather had moved to the northeastern part of Henan, where heavy rainfall and flooding were reported in the city of Xinxiang and residents were urged not to leave their homes unless necessary, the AP reported.
At the height of the flooding in Zhengzhou, torrents of water rushed into subways and filled train cars, where a dozen of the victims are reported to have died.
"The water reached my chest," one survivor wrote on social media, according to Reuters. "I was really scared, but the most terrifying thing was not the water, but the diminishing air supply in the carriage."
Video posted by state-run media The Paper showed a scene similar to what the survivor described, with subway riders stoically standing in deep, muddy brown water.
Another person told Reuters that many people were on the subway because the flooding had shut down bus service.
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More than 500 people were rescued, according to the BBC.
In all, at least 10 trains carrying about 10,000 passengers were stopped by the flooding, including three that were halted for more than 40 hours, the AP reported. Sections of more than two dozen highways were closed.
A power outage shut down ventilators at a hospital in Zhengzhou. Staff used hand-pumped airbags to help patients breathe, according to the city’s Communist Party committee, and more than 600 were moved to other hospitals.
On Tuesday night, China's military blasted a dam to prevent flooding in the city of Luoyang, about 89 miles west of Zhengzhou. Both cities are several hundred miles southwest of Beijing in the central province of Henan.
Officials in Henan said 100,000 had been evacuated from their homes due to flooding.
The rain in Zhengzhou came in deluges over three days. About 31 inches fell in a 72-hour period through Wednesday evening, local time.
That's more rain than the city would normally receive in an entire year, weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said Wednesday.
The Zhengzhou weather bureau said the three days of rain was at a level seen "once in a thousand years."
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
