Telling waterline

In this recent round of strong rain, many car owners learned that they don't have to be driving to feel its effects. A 25-year-old woman who lives in Xudong area of Wuhan was stunned when she returned from a June 17-20 business trip.

Flooding turns a two-hour storm into a spectator sport in the Majiapu area of southwest Beijing. Pedestrians didn't have to deal with vehicles that were swamped on Thursday when the rain overtaxed the city's drains. [Xinhua]

"The morning after I got home, when I opened the car door, I found the seat was all wet," said the woman, who didn't want her name used. She said she had closed the windows when she had parked the car, but a neighbor told her the water level had reached around 80 cm on June 18 and 19. She wasn't sure how long her car stood in the rainwater, but there was a clear waterline on the car about 55 cm high.

A mechanic checked her car and found that water had penetrated the gearbox, she said, and then told her that repairs would cost 10,000 yuan ($1,544). And she was dissatisfied with the response by her insurance company. "It irritated me greatly." Wuhan's traffic control department said more than 2,000 cars were similarly affected.

Worth the cost?

Officials of the Drainage Department of Wuhan Water Authority echoed Professor Wang in Beijing on the outdated storm-drain infrastructure. "As an old city, Wuhan built its underground drainage system long time ago," the authority said in a written statement. "As the city continues to develop, the old-fashioned system cannot meet the need of today's urban development."

Yao Zhaohui, director of the urban planning division of Zhejiang Provincial Construction Department, agreed. "The updating of drainage systems is too slow to catch up with the urbanization."

The problem is hard to resolve, said Zhang Beiping,56, a municipal engineering professor with Huazhong University of Science & Technology in Wuhan. A drainage system could be built to handle the heaviest rains, but it would be very expensive and such rains fall rarely.

Zhang said Wuhan's continuing, large-scale construction also aggravated the situation. The flooding at roughly half the intersections that were underwater on June 18 was caused by damaged flow pipes on construction sites of subway stations or the city's Second Ring Road, according to a report from the Wuhan Water Bureau, released on Thursday.

Ye Qing, 49, a National People's Congress deputy from Wuhan, said he visited the drainage system in Paris in the past, and the underground main drains were big enough to drive a car through. The systems in China, including Wuhan's, "are very narrow", Ye said.

He said he understands the high costs of construction, but suggested that areas now under development improve their drainage systems. Climate extremes appear to be appearing more frequently.