48 hours of continuously hard rain pounded Kunming’s downtown area late last week dropping more than 40 cm of water and flooding the city’s north and central business districts. Two city residents were killed and one still remains missing. Tens of thousands of Kunmingers woke up on Friday morning to find their cars submerged, and the inventories of hundreds of downtown shops were ruined. Four kilometers of Beijing Road, the city’s main north-south artery were shut down, crippling city traffic through Sunday.
Late Thursday night, the remnants of the easterly moving Typhoon Soulik clashed with the westerly wet seasonal monsoons directly above the city’s center and the rain did not let up until early Sunday morning. Kunming, which has been in a state of constant dry season drought for the past five years, had unseasonably low levels of rain this summer prior to the two day storm. The low levels likely prompted city officials to continue maintenance on the Panlong river, a canal that runs parallel to Beijing Road and serves as the city’s main drainage channel. The maintenance project cut off more than half of the canal’s waterway in key segments and when the rains hit, the canal spilled over into the city streets. Subway construction underneath Beijing Road likely blocked key drainage channels further exacerbating the situation. By Saturday, the city’s main flood manager declared a total failure of Kunming’s flood prevention system. Continue reading
