Photo report: Torrential rains flood Chengdu and Sichuan

Yesterday's downpour triggered flooding across the city, with pedestrians, cyclists, and cars all caught in the water, which reached up to 1 meter in some places.

The rain affected all modes of transportation, leaving drivers all over the city in a mass gridlock, even some subway stations flooded, 7,000 vehicles held up by landslides in Wenchuan, over 5,000 passengers stranded at Shuangliu Airport, and interrupting train service between Kunming and Chengdu.

Power cuts were reported around the city, some lasting until the following day.

Trees fell, walls toppled with the impact of the swelling earth, drains overflowed, and sidewalk tiles cracked.

The rainfall measured in at 50mm with some areas of the city recording up to 200mm. Over 5,000 lightning flashes were recorded.

Rain is predicted on and off for the next few days, to the delight of some residents.

Apocalyptic images like this inspired some Photoshoppers to get busy ...

... bumping up the Hollywood-predicted "doomsday" up to 2011.

The flooding in Chengdu comes on the heels of heavy rain and flooding in Beijing.

Residents there found an alternate use for condoms — keeping their shoes dry.

Other cities in Sichuan, including Dujiangyan and Wenchuan (pictured above), saw flooding and landslides as well.

Finally, for a roundup of this week's best of flood pictures from around China, click here, or here for pictures from Chengdu's flood. More pictures are here, and here.

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This article was posted by Joe and published July 4, 2011

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Comments

- waterworld
  July 4, 2011
- Why does the subway get flooded??? Is that normal?
- francesen
  July 4, 2011
- Yep, that second picture and last picture is right outside my house. See all that water there? Much of it flowed right into our underground parking lot while the guards and management stood around passively. Now there is about 6 foot of water still in there - cars and my electric bike is submerged in sewer water and they pumped it out all night and it only went down maybe a foot. We had no power last night, still probably no water and no elevator. And our bike lady lost her home and her money.
  Also amazing the amount of cars that tried to drive though this 80-90cm of water on the road and get stuck. I watched probably 6 or 7 cars do this, break down one after the other. If they see cars above abandoned, what makes them think they could get though?!
  Also, it was flooding from about 4pm, no traffic police even showed up until about 9pm as far as I could tell. The bridge even filled up with a second queue of traffic that got stuck because some idiot must have let them in the other end.
- CD_Sherry
  July 4, 2011
- I had been slept that afternoon in my house, it is so lucky for me.
- invisible
  July 4, 2011
- Going around town I realized that these huge trees on the street were all hit by lightning.
  It starts raining again and the weather report predicts three days & nights of rain, so it's not over.
- spandolf
  July 6, 2011
- The flood in May 2010 seemed much worse than last Sunday's, but did not seem to cause so much traffic chaos.
  Probably there are twice as many cars in Chengdu this year as there were last year and it was a Sunday and last year's flood was a working day - on Sunday all the Weekend drivers were out!
- Balmer
  July 6, 2011
- @spandolf - I'm calling your bluff on this.... PICS OR GTFO. There is no way there was a flood in May 2010 in Chengdu that was anywhere near as big as the one on Sunday. The roads outside my apartment were COMPLETELY flooded, underground parking was waist height.
- OhKeh
  July 7, 2011
- By my place, the water rushing out of the sewers knocked all the manhole covers off. These drivers trying to get through close to waist height water would get their front tire stuck in the sewer holes. Someone would help them get out, they would drive on and the next person in line would fall into the hole. Even with us yelling and waving our arms to them, they still drove right up.
- pookey
  July 8, 2011
- kind of going with Balmer on this one. What bloody floods in 2010?
- c v bhatt
  January 9, 2012
- torrentiak rain ki mai ki chhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttt