Inspiration after the flood

Civil servants can play key role in weather disasters

After torrential rains in mid July ravaged large parts of China and caused massive losses of life and property, support surged for improving urban drainage systems. This could be a multibillion yuan business, said many observers.

However, I think there’s another option, one that draws on our existing resources. After my recent experience last week when the heaviest rain of the year hit Beijing and triggered the city’s first- ever flood warning alert in history, I believe that an efficiently mobilized civil service and a flexible system of coordination and management also deserve attention.

This is a powerful means China could use to fight urban flooding during periods of heavy rain.

Using this means effectively could reduce the financial burden of building up our cities’ underground drainage systems of pipelines and reservoirs.

Starting on July 19, rain fell for more than 40 hours in Beijing. When I left my office on the evening of July 20, I took a bus home. The high- tech options, such as car- hailing apps, either demanded long waits, exorbitant prices or offered no service at all.

Luckily, my last resort was to fall back on public transportation, and the experience was surprisingly good.

When the bus ran through an underpass where you’d expect a pool of runoff water, there was no flood at all.

I saw a worker standing beside a draining channel, holding a baton as a traffic signal. His work station, surrounded by traffic cones, a drainage pump and tubes, ensured smooth traffic, which was a gift to those of us passing through a high- hazard area for water accumulation.

I also spotted from the bus one sanitation worker using her bare hands to remove tree leaves and garbage to make sure a drain was not blocked.

As the bus plowed through the storm runoff like a gunboat through the waves, I came to the realization that my safe journey home owed much to thousands of civil servants who kept the city afloat during one of the worst weather episodes in the capital’s meteorological history.

It also seems that the Beijing municipal drainage authority is doing a much better job than it did in 2012, when rainstorm-inflicted disasters claimed dozens of lives and caused massive property damage.

Globally, cities such as Paris, Berlin and Tokyo all invested heavily in their drain- age systems. But China, as a developing country, has limited resources, so simply copying what the developed nations of the world have done, such as building massive underground infrastructure, can be costly and unwise.

According to media reports, China planned in 2015 to invest $ 35 billion yuan ($ 5.25 billion) to build 389 kilometers of advanced drainage systems in 10 Chinese cities. That’s about 100 million yuan per kilometer, which is comparable to that of a high- speed railway but generates much less added value.

As there are voices clamoring for large- scale construction of these drainage infrastructure systems, it is worthy of note that such infrastructure will not generate added value like other projects such as roads and railways.

We need to bear this in mind if we decide to invest taxpayers’ money in this way, especially for arid cities like Beijing, where a torrent on the scale of the July 20 one is a small probability event.

For cities like Beijing, and probably many other cities where floods are not a frequent risk, tapping on the country’s vast advantages in mobilization, execution and the diligence of its workers is an expedient solution worthy of serious consideration.

After all, a safety net made of diligence and initiative is as impenetrable as a safety net constructed with expensive, high- tech equipment.