ZHENGZHOU, China — The heaviest hour of rainfall ever reliably recorded in China crashed like a miles-wide waterfall over the city of Zhengzhou on July 20, killing at least 300 people, including 14 who drowned in a subway tunnel.
In the aftermath, regional and national officials initially suggested that little could have been done in the face of a storm of such magnitude.
But an analysis of how the authorities responded that day, based on government documents, interviews with experts and Chinese news reports, shows that flaws in the subway system’s design and missteps in its operations that day almost certainly contributed to the deaths in the tunnel.
shut down its subway on Sept. 1 during a downpour less than half as heavy.
China’s go-go development model of the last four decades. It highlighted questions about how well China’s cities, including its subways, can cope as extreme weather occurs more frequently. Zhengzhou’s subway only began to reopen on Sunday.
“We humans need to learn to dance with wolves and survive with extreme weather and climate,” said Kong Feng, an associate professor of disaster and emergency management at China Agricultural University in Beijing, “because we currently have no better way to stop it.”
