From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Anger Builds in Towns Deliberately Flooded, in Part, to Save Beijing   
   By Keith Bradsher, Aug. 4, 2023, NY Times   
   For days, the rain came down in sheets, pounding Beijing and areas around it   
   in what the government said was the heaviest deluge China’s capital had seen   
   since record keeping began 140 years ago.   
      
   When the extreme downpour finally stopped on Tuesday, most of Beijing had been   
   spared the worst — but partly because officials made sure the floodwaters   
   went elsewhere.   
      
   Officials in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing, had opened flood gates and   
   spillways in seven low-lying flood control zones to prevent rivers and   
   reservoirs from overflowing in Beijing and the region’s other metropolis,   
   Tianjin, state media said.    
   The Communist Party leader of Hebei, Ni Yuefeng, said he ordered the   
   “activation of flood storage and diversion areas in an orderly manner, so as   
   to reduce the pressure on Beijing’s flood control and resolutely build a   
   ‘moat’ for the capital.”   
      
   That move further inundated the adjacent city of Zhuozhou in Hebei, which had   
   already been struggling to contain its own floods after a levee broke and a   
   local river overflowed. Its streets and neighborhoods turned into a brown,   
   muddy lake, with water up    
   to 23 feet deep destroying homes and businesses.   
      
   Nearly a million people have been forced to evacuate in the province and in   
   adjacent villages on the fringes of Beijing. In some areas, the flooding has   
   disrupted power supplies as well as internet and mobile connections. Residents   
   have posted online    
   pleas for help finding hundreds of missing people.   
      
   China is not the only country that sometimes opens spillways to divert   
   floodwaters from big cities to areas with fewer residents — an emergency,   
   last-resort measure aimed at reducing destruction and loss of life. The   
   Morganza Floodway in central    
   Louisiana, last opened in 2011, has 125 huge gates that can open to drain   
   floodwaters coming down the Mississippi River away from New Orleans and into   
   the sparsely populated, swampy Atchafalaya Basin.   
      
   But in China, the crisis in Zhuozhou has set off widespread anger, in part   
   because help was initially slow to arrive in some areas, leaving many   
   stranded. Survivors have also complained that they were not given ample   
   warning about the discharge of    
   floodwaters, and questioned if they would be compensated for their losses.   
      
   In particular, people have denounced what they perceive as a Hebei leadership   
   that has been more interested in appeasing national leaders in Beijing than in   
   safeguarding millions of Chinese citizens. Mr. Ni’s “moat” comment,   
   seemingly insensitive    
   to the losses endured by his residents, became a hashtag that quickly amassed   
   more than 60 million views before censors began suppressing the online   
   discussion.   
      
   “To protect Beijing, no one cares if we in Hebei are being flooded,” a   
   resident of a village on Zhuozhou’s outskirts complained on Friday morning,   
   speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal for criticizing the   
   government.   
      
   Another Zhuozhou resident stood at the edge of a field next to his partly   
   submerged village on the city’s outskirts on Friday, waiting for lingering,   
   thigh-deep water to subside. He said that he had put his belongings on chairs   
   and put the chairs up on    
   beds before fleeing his house as the waters rose. But water flowed at least   
   six feet deep through his home, ruining his possessions and destroying his   
   nearby pile of construction materials.   
      
   “No one ever informed us of the flood discharge or told us to prepare to   
   evacuate — if we had known this information, we would not have left so many   
   things behind,” said the villager, who gave his family name, Yu.   
   “Everything is soaked in water.    
   I can barely calculate my loss.”   
      
   Crumpled chunks of steel siding, a white dressing table and a steeply leaning   
   wood shed were strewn across the field near Mr. Yu, showing the force with   
   which floodwaters had surged through the area.   
      
   The driver of a large yellow front loader used its bucket to carry a   
   gray-haired woman in a wheelchair out of a deeply flooded street, then carried   
   cases of drinking water in to residents still there. A gray minivan towing two   
   red inflatable motorboats    
   waited nearby to enter the neighborhood.   
      
   The government and party have set aside at least $20 million for flood   
   prevention, relief and reconstruction efforts in Beijing and Hebei; another   
   $63 million was allocated on Friday to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei for the   
   restoration of dams, reservoirs    
   and other water facilities. Zhuozhou’s government issued a national appeal   
   on Thursday for donations of money and relief supplies.   
      
   The official China Daily newspaper published a commentary that called for   
   residents who suffered losses because of the flood diversion to be   
   compensated, as required by Chinese law at least for those living in   
   designated flood diversion areas. It said    
   the authorities should be better prepared for future disasters, describing the   
   recent deluge as a “wakeup call.”   
      
   “Ensuring the safety of people in flood diversion areas, ensuring adequate   
   compensation, and assisting in the swift reconstruction of their homes and   
   livelihoods are essential aspects of disaster management,” the newspaper   
   said.   
      
   But the flooding extended beyond designated diversion areas, which could   
   complicate compensation. And many living in Zhuozhou are migrants from other   
   provinces who lack legal residency in Hebei.   
      
   “Do you think we migrants are eligible to receive compensation?” said   
   another resident, who makes a living by gathering discarded trash in Beijing   
   and selling it to recyclers in Hebei. “It’s impossible.”   
      
   The flooding wreaked havoc elsewhere in Zhuozhou: a book publisher lost more   
   than $3.5 million worth of books in a single hour; some animal shelters were   
   inundated.   
      
   Two Chinese partner groups of Humane Society International, the Capital Animal   
   Welfare Association in Beijing and Dalian Vshine, estimated that floodwaters   
   carried away 400 dogs and 300 cats from shelters, although some were later   
   found clinging to    
   rooftops and treetops downstream.   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)