Hebei suffered the worst flooding in living memory earlier this month after Typhoon Doksuri hit northern China, killing at least 29 people and 95.8 billion yuan ($13.3 billion) in direct economic losses in the province alone.
Nearly 5% of Hebei’s 74.2 million people were affected by the floods, with more than 40,000 homes destroyed and another 155,500 severely damaged, officials said.
Around 2 million people have been displaced by the disaster.
The province will ensure affected residents can return to their homes or have new homes before this winter, China News Service reported, citing a briefing from officials.
This year’s floods were the largest in Hebei since 1963, with 51.5% of its landmass receiving more than 100 millimeters of rain, provincial officials said at the briefing.
Some residents of Zhuozhou city, one of Hebei’s worst-hit areas, criticized the local government for not providing them with more aid after excess floodwaters from provincial reservoirs were diverted to so-called flood storage areas in the region.
Beijing officials said on Thursday that post-disaster reconstruction in the capital could take up to a year, after flooding claimed 33 lives, mostly in the mountainous rural outskirts of the city.
The central government has allocated a total of 7.74 billion yuan ($1.07 billion) in disaster relief funds for flood-hit areas, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and provinces from Hebei, Heilongjiang and Jilin, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said. Friday.
