Chinese NGO rescue teams rushing to flood-hit areas in the north ‘told to wait for official clearance’
- Southern Weekly report on delays goes viral as northern China battles its heaviest rain in decades, with doubts raised over local disaster responses
- State-backed digital outlet The Paper points to November’s central directive on ‘orderly’ disaster relief as the likely cause for the red tape
The Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly reported on Tuesday night that NGO relief and rescue teams from outside Zhuozhou, a flood-hit city near the capital Beijing, were told they needed an invitation letter from the local emergency management bureau before setting off.
Another private rescue team based in the eastern province of Jiangsu told the newspaper that, “due to the disruption of mobile communications caused by the flooding, it took several hours for the invitation letter to arrive.”
The story went viral on Chinese social media on Tuesday night, raising questions about the efficiency of the local governments’ disaster response.
In a commentary published on Wednesday on their social media page, state-backed digital news platform The Paper pointed to a directive from the Ministry of Emergency Management in November as a possible source of the bottleneck.
The directive required all emergency management agencies of local governments to “ensure orderly disaster relief”, including keeping official records of relief efforts, with approval mandatory for all non-public relief teams wishing to travel to affected areas, the Shanghai-based news outlet said.
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The local government of Zhuozhou, a county-level city of Hebei near southwestern Beijing with a population of 650,000, said more than 130,000 people and 146 villages had been affected.
Zhuozhou authorities sent letters to several rescue teams asking for help on Tuesday morning, The Paper said. By afternoon, Zhuozhou police were making urgent calls on the Weibo microblogging platform for lighting equipment and boats for flood rescue.
Hebei flood control and drought relief authorities on Tuesday said the rains and flooding had killed nine people in the province.
An online form circulating on social media platforms for Zhuozhou residents to reach out to rescue teams had received more than 1,200 requests by Wednesday afternoon.
Rescue missions were still under way in the town of Zhuozhou and other parts of northern China, with helicopters and military rescue teams in operation. But the worst of the rainfall appeared to be over.
Typhoon Doksuri hammers China, bringing floods and landslides
On Wednesday, Beijing cancelled its rainstorm warning. One area alone in Beijing’s northern Changping district reported 744.8 mm (29.3 inches) of rain from Saturday to Wednesday – the highest since records began in 1883.
However, areas further north are bracing for heavy rainfall until Friday, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the Ministry of Water Resources.
The ministry launched a level-four emergency response on Wednesday morning for flood control in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, the report said.
China has a four-tier flood-control emergency response system, with level one the highest.
