Chinese subway passengers trapped by rising floodwaters as torrential rain pounds Henan province (VIDEOS)

Subway riders in Zhengzhou in China’s Henan province found themselves trapped by rising floodwaters on Tuesday as rivers burst their banks, pouring into streets and disrupting train services after 200mm of rain fell in one hour.

Footage circulating online shows subway passengers in murky, near shoulder-deep water inside a train carriage, as railway services were suspended amid the chaos caused by the deluge.

While no deaths or injuries have been reported, transport infrastructure in the province has been seriously affected by severe storms and heavy rain since the weekend. Henan is a major regional transport hub, but roads and tunnels have become extremely waterlogged, with cars and buses seen floating in the murky floodwater in some areas, while torrents of water were seen spreading throughout the streets.

Elsewhere in the province, the water levels in the Yi River have threatened to damage the Buddhist Longmen Grottoes UNESCO World Heritage site, which is home to millennium-old statues.

Flooding caused an explosion at an aluminum alloy plant in Dengfeng, Henan, after waters surged through factory walls and hit the high-temperature solution in a tank, creating a fireball at the facility. No injuries or fatalities are believed to have occurred at the plant, although the Dengfeng Power Group has not yet issued a public comment on the incident.

Between Saturday and Tuesday, weather stations around Henan recorded rainfall that exceeded 50mm, with 1,614 monitoring points documenting levels above 100mm and 151 higher than 250mm, according to local data cited by Reuters.

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