‘hard to breathe’

‘I Can’t Speak Any More’: Passengers Recall Terror as Chinese Subway Flooded

The flooding left at least 12 people dead.

The flooding of a Chinese subway station Tuesday left at least 12 dead, five injured, and countless others crying for help. Extreme rain flooded the Zhengzhou station, resulting in a train carriage being almost fully submerged in water. Social media videos showed passengers desperately trying to break windows—only to find more water waiting for them on the other side. Many were struggling to breathe, and some fainted. “I can’t speak any more,” a woman wrote on social media site Weibo. “If no rescue comes in 20 minutes, hundreds of us will lose our lives.” After hours of water rising, rescuers were able to reach the passengers through the roof of the train carriage, helping them climb through a window. “We knocked on the glass a bit [on the ceiling]. Then suddenly there was air,” another woman told CCTV, according to BBC News.

The rampant rainfall in the country brought a year’s worth of rain within three days, inducing large amounts of flooding. It is responsible for the deaths of another 33 people in the Henan province, where Zhengzhou is located, and the evacuation of 200,000.