Chapter 16 Suicheng
The street lights on the small road outside Ping'an Community were between five and six meters high, much higher than the community's walls. Now the walls are no longer visible, and only a row of roofs remain of the shops on both sides of the path.
These street lamps are like aquatic plants, short, bare and neat, but also full of weirdness.
Looking out from the upper floor, this was indeed an absurd and weird scene. At least in the minds of most people, such a scene would never appear in reality.
The sky was already completely bright, but the heavy rain was still falling, crackling on the water's surface. The gloomy sunlight reflected the appearance of the city outside in everyone's eyes without reservation.
It was still noisy outside. Most of the low bungalows around were only two or three stories high. Now most of them were hidden under the turbid water, leaving only a dilapidated roof.
There were still people on some of the roofs, some wearing pajamas, some wrapped in raincoats, some barely holding umbrellas, some standing or sitting, waiting for rescue with helpless expressions.
The wind today is stronger than yesterday. Although the rising water level has not formed a flood, it will form some undulating waves with the wind, pushing all kinds of garbage in the water and hitting the walls of buildings submerged in the water.
In those buildings, their homes, furniture, electrical appliances... everything they had accumulated over many years of hard work was soaked in dirty, cold water.
Is this... the end of the world?
On major communication platforms, many people try hard to browse the Internet from time to time, hoping to learn about the outside situation and news in this way, while calming their inner panic.
But the Internet is also in chaos at this moment.
——This is the end of the world! This must be the end of the world! Do you remember the news about a man jumping off a building live? The man said that there would be heavy rain, floods and tsunamis, and finally the sea level would rise and submerge most of the land on this planet! The end of the world is really coming! That man is not crazy!
——Although, the rain this time was terrible, and we evacuated from our home to a temporary shelter. But isn’t it a bit far-fetched to talk about the end of the world?
——What live news about jumping off a building? How come I don’t know about it?
——In the face of disaster, don’t be alarmist. Pay more attention to the notifications from the streets where your community is located. Rescue may come at any time. Pack up the items you must carry and wait for rescue!
——The water level in our river has risen sharply. It seems that someone was washed away by the water at midnight yesterday! My house is in a small high-rise building at the back. It seems that the people who were washed away by the river are from the shop in front! Now the rescue team has come. It seems that the water flow is too fast and the people are probably gone. However, the bodies have not been found yet. I don’t know if it is true...
——The above person is probably talking about the same place, right? I was in the shop in front. The water level rose sharply in the middle of the night and everyone was climbing on the roof. At that time, I heard someone next door screaming, "He's drowned, help him!"
——Oh my god, this is so scary…
Of course, there is also positive news on the Internet.
——The situation is worse in the county and towns. There are few tall buildings in those places, and the water level rises too quickly, which can easily cause mudslides and floods. In addition, the county has a small population and inconvenient transportation, so the rescue force is far from enough. Suicheng is a big city after all, so the situation is not bad. At least people can hide upstairs, and evacuation is still going on. The situation is already good.
——I took a photo for you to see. This is the library of Suicheng University. I evacuated here yesterday. The residential area where I originally lived was composed of two- or three-story bungalows. Because of the low terrain, they have all been flooded. Suicheng University is located at a relatively high altitude, and the water layer is relatively shallow. This library is located on a platform that is two stories high, so the water has no impact at all. The central main building is twelve stories high, with a backup generator and a lounge. The building is also very solid, and there is no damage to the glass windows. The rescue team distributed supplies, and during the day everyone was playing chess and cards in the chess and card room, and it was quite lively...
Below this video are a series of replies such as "I want to go" and "I'm envious".
There is also some news circulating in the chat groups in the same city.
——I live on the 18th floor. I was envied by the residents living on the lower floors, especially the first floor. There is no garage downstairs in our community. The first floor is a garden room. They were the first batch of evacuees. They were said to have moved to the West City Stadium. But today, a resident who settled in the stadium said that they seemed to be arranged to evacuate out of the city! To the west of Suicheng is Sankou Province, Ningcheng, Shanyangcheng, Zhangcheng... and even Louyuncheng, which is farther away. Although it is also raining there, there is no flood problem at present. We should all evacuate there!
In different chat groups, you can see several similar messages like this.
Some people have a wide range of social contacts and a large group of friends, so they act as porters, carrying information everywhere.
**
Someone also forwarded this message in the Ping'an Community Mutual Help Group.
Strictly speaking, this is good news. Suicheng is currently suffering from severe flooding, and the surging water level has broken through the psychological defenses of many people. The water on the second floor - actually the third floor - has reached the thigh level, and the people on the second floor have evacuated upstairs.
Either you temporarily stay at the home of a neighbor upstairs who you have a good relationship with, or simply make do with a cushion and a chair in the stairwell.
But the stairwell is small after all. Even if the garbage originally piled there is moved away, it still cannot accommodate many people. The rain hits the open-plan residents' walkway at an angle, making it impossible for people to live there.
During this period, someone knocked on Shu Fu's door once. Her house was on the outermost side of the top floor, farthest from the stairwell, and she was not familiar with anyone in the entire building. The person who knocked on the door had no idea about the situation in her house, and had no way of judging whether there was anyone there. He just wanted to stay there with the idea of giving it a try.
This house is small and has no entrance hall. Next to the door is the kitchen area and dining room, and across the bar table is the living room. You can see the situation in these two areas of the house just by looking through the window or opening the door straight.
So since the flood began, she has kept the small kitchen window facing the corridor completely closed, and has drawn the blinds both day and night, with an extra layer of blackout curtains outside.
The knocking on the door by the other party went from slow to rapid, with different tones of voice. Sometimes he would make a sound if there was someone there, saying that neighbors hope to help each other. Sometimes he would say that he had a child at home and would not have bothered others if it were not for the child.
In the end, even the people next door were alarmed. The hostess and Zhong Li, who was staying at their house, opened the door. Zhong Li had a bad expression on her face and asked the other party not to knock on the door anymore. No one responded after knocking for so long, which meant that either no one was there or they just didn't want to pay attention.
The other party knocked on this house before knocking on Shu Fu's door, but they couldn't stay there because someone was already staying there. When they heard the two of them speak, they hurriedly asked if they knew the situation of Shu Fu's family.
"This one——" Zhong Li seemed to want to say something, but was quickly pulled away by someone beside her.
The hostess next door not only stopped her from speaking, but also pulled the person in, and then answered the other party herself, saying that she was sorry and didn't know, and asked them not to continue knocking and to try other houses.
The north-facing curtains in Shu Fu's kitchen were drawn tightly, and nothing could be seen from the outside.
In fact, she had been checking the situation outside through the peephole and heard the answer from next door.
Because the person knocking on the door was not a neighbor on the same floor and she was aware of the other party's purpose, she had no intention of opening the door this time, and did not even respond. She just stood quietly inside the door with the stun gun in her hand.
The other party waited for a long time without receiving a response and finally had to leave complaining.
Without a house, the living space is greatly squeezed, it becomes cold, damp, and there are all kinds of inconveniences in life... plus there are too many people, so conflicts will naturally breed.
It was still raining heavily outside, the water level was rising all the time, and the residents on the third floor began to panic.
While everyone is afraid of being flooded, what they are more afraid of is the depth of the water at this moment.
If the accumulated water goes up one more layer, most areas of Suicheng will become oceans, and the buildings will become isolated islands. Although I don't want to exaggerate, such a scene really looks like the end of the world.
At this time, seeing the news of evacuating Suicheng in the group is a shot in the arm for everyone.
But a new problem arises. Although Suicheng is not a first-tier city, it has a permanent population of seven or eight million. If we start evacuating out of the city now, when will it be our turn for so many people?
Is it possible that the floor I’m on has already been flooded before the rescue team arrives?
At noon, two speedboats arrived at the flooded road area outside the community and picked up the residents who had been waiting on the roof for nearly eight hours.
Some of the other residents in Ping'an Community who were forced to move upstairs due to the flood noticed the appearance of the speedboat and immediately shouted in that direction.
The movements of these people soon attracted the attention of residents in other houses, and everyone ran out from the stairwells and neighbors' homes where they were temporarily staying.
They had barely enough time to put on their rain gear, and regardless of the heavy rain outside the aisle, they lay on the aisle fence, waving and shouting in the direction of the speedboat.
The sudden shouting of the residents startled Shu Fu, who was reading an e-book in the house. She did not go out and could not see the situation outside from the south balcony, so she ran to the small east-facing window of the bathroom and soon saw the speedboat gradually going away in the heavy rain.
Two floors below, the voices of the residents had become hoarse, but no matter how they shouted or waved, the people on the two speedboats in the heavy rain outside the community seemed not to hear them and soon sailed away with the people on the two boats.
It was not until the shadows of the two speedboats passed the building and completely disappeared from sight that the residents in the building gradually stopped shouting.
The heavy rain soaked them all, and cold rain kept dripping down their hair and cheeks, but their hearts were colder than their bodies.
The sound of rain was indeed noisy, but with so many people shouting together and the building being so high up, the two speedboats couldn't have failed to hear the noise, but the people on the boats had no intention of turning back.
"Didn't they say that they would continue to arrange for the transfer of other people on the second floor and above? What does this mean now? Are they not going to take care of us?" Everyone returned to the stairwell, all wet, and wrapped themselves in towels or blankets handed over by their families, but they were still shivering with cold. If they didn't change their wet clothes, they would not be able to keep out the cold at all.
"Is it because we live in a building and the water hasn't flooded to the point where people would die, so they didn't come to pick us up?" someone speculated tremblingly.
This is an outrageous guess, but at this moment, it is the most likely answer that everyone can think of.
But if this is true, then it means that Suicheng - no, not just Suicheng, but all the cities that have experienced heavy rain, hail, thunderstorms, typhoons... this time, have fallen into an extremely bad situation.
If everyone's previous anxiety was mostly due to anger and dissatisfaction with the slow action of the rescue team, then at this moment, helplessness and worry began to magnify in this anxiety.
The rescue team was not slow in action, but simply too late to rescue!
**
Fortunately, before the situation became chaotic, everyone's mobile phones received several notifications in the evening. These were several official evacuation notices.
The notice stated that within six days starting from now, Suicheng officials will arrange for all residents to evacuate, and the evacuation time, evacuation direction and evacuation destination will be different in different areas and streets.
The overall evacuation adopts a progressive relay transfer approach.
At present, there are some higher-lying areas in the suburbs of Suicheng that have not suffered from floods or have been greatly affected by floods. The buildings in these places have all become official resettlement sites, serving as the first phase of transitional shelters to accommodate batches of people evacuated from the city.
By the time the second, third, and other batches of people evacuated from the city one after another, the previous batch of people had continued to evacuate to other resettlement sites far away from the flooded areas, leaving the previous shelters vacant.
This method is mainly used to solve the huge number of people in the city who need to be evacuated.
At the temporary resettlement sites, authorities will provide drinking water, medical supplies and electricity to help people survive the flood.
Officials called on the public to remain calm, not spread rumors, be prepared to carry their backpacks, and wait in an orderly manner for rescue to arrive.
At the same time, the authorities have provided a website, which is a real-time disaster rescue information network. The evacuation time, direction, and destination of Suicheng and surrounding suburbs, nearby county towns and other areas can be checked on it.
As many areas of Suicheng were hit by power outages, residents were reminded to write down their evacuation information on paper after checking.
At present, the WiFi in the areas where power outage occurs in Suicheng is unavailable, and the traffic signals of mobile phone cards have also been affected. Suicheng officials are trying their best to maintain mobile signals in the flood-stricken areas.
People who do not have enough data do not need to worry. Currently, telecommunications companies have opened unlimited data packages for free to people in areas of China that are severely affected by floods. Just call the telecommunications company that owns the phone card and follow the instructions to activate it.
Therefore, as long as you find a way to keep your mobile phone charged - for example, fully charge all power banks for standby when a call comes in, and use your phone less and choose low-power mode when there is a power outage, you don’t have to worry about losing contact with the outside world.
If some people have the conditions to evacuate on their own - they have simple boats such as rubber boats, they can also organize their own evacuation and go to official shelters closer to their homes.
This official refuge point is different from previous temporary transfer points. It was re-selected and planned after considering various aspects such as the flood situation, terrain height, and the convenience of later evacuation. It includes previous temporary transfer points, but also many new refuge points.
All shelters are open to the public. People who go there on their own will be organized into progressive transfer teams according to their arrival time.
The areas for evacuation in batches and at different times were divided very clearly, down to the details of streets and communities.
Ping'an Community belongs to Zhongchao Street, Xicheng District, Suicheng. It is located on the outskirts of the city and is an area with many high-rise buildings in the entire Zhongchao Street. The evacuation time is scheduled between 17:00 and 18:00 on the evening of the third day of the six-day evacuation period. The evacuation direction is an industrial plant area on the outskirts of Suicheng.
There are several hills nearby, and the terrain is relatively high, but the factory is also some distance away from the mountains. It is relatively safe at the moment and can accommodate many people.
Now is the first day of the general evacuation, which means that it will take at least 48 hours for the rescue team to appear in Ping'an Community and take all residents away.
In addition to the information time of the large-scale evacuation, the Internet also provides basic knowledge on how to deal with various disasters such as heavy rain, thunderstorms, hail, typhoons, floods, tsunamis, and water disasters.
In some more urgent situations, the location, pictures and videos can also be uploaded through this real-time information network to send out emergency calls.
The air rescue team will provide timely rescue based on the location of the distress call.
However, this function is only for life-threatening emergencies. If the rescuers arrive and find that the uploaded description does not match the facts, the caller will face a prison sentence of more than five years for wantonly wasting emergency rescue resources.
In addition, there were some detailed notifications about the six-day evacuation of Suicheng, such as requirements on clothing and weight limits on carry-on backpacks.
**
All residents of Suicheng evacuated?
If such an announcement had been made half a month ago, it would have been unimaginable and no one would have believed that the entire city would be evacuated because of a rain.
That night, almost everyone's topic revolved around the great evacuation.
In the Ping'an Community Mutual Aid Group, not everyone is satisfied with the evacuation arrangement, because the evacuation direction to the nearby area is all industrial factories, but there are always people who want to go to other official shelters for various reasons.
For example, the Lu Zheng brothers.
They know that the official shelters are only temporary resettlement points and that they will continue to evacuate to cities that have not been affected by floods.
The subsequent relocation direction of the industrial plant was the city southwest of Suicheng, but their hometown was Pincheng, northwest of Suicheng.
Pincheng is also on the list of cities to be evacuated later. They have relatives in their hometown and a small house, which is a backup plan left by Lu Zheng for the brothers' future life events.
Instead of evacuating to a strange city and continuing to live in a shelter, they might as well return to their hometown for a while. At least that is their home, which is comfortable and secure without having to incur extra expenses.
However, if you want to return to Pincheng as all passenger transport such as airplanes, trains, and cars have been suspended, you cannot evacuate to the industrial plant area in the early stages and must move to other official shelters.
There will be several refuge points to Pincheng in the future, but like some other people, they are now trapped here. Without any boats such as rubber boats, they have no control over the direction of their escape.
Among Shu Fu's friends, Zhang Tian's family was undoubtedly in the best situation: "Everyone riding the speedboat can only carry a backpack weighing less than five kilograms. In other words, in addition to important documents, mobile phones, and power banks, they can only bring two bottles of water and some instant food at most, and they can't even bring many pieces of clothes..."
Others are concerned about when the rescue team will arrive, but she is more concerned about the trade-offs during the transfer.
Zhang Tian's home is on the 20th floor. The building is solid and well-equipped. The high-end community is also equipped with independent power supply lines and backup diesel generators.
The only bad news for her was that another house in the same community was broken into last night.
There were surveillance cameras installed outside the door and inside the house. The water level rose sharply last night, and she accidentally thought of it and opened her mobile phone to check. She found that a group of strangers had moved into her newly renovated house that she had not lived in for a few times.
Although there was not much fresh food in the house, it was fully stocked with rice, flour, oil, instant food and various daily necessities.
And now, everything has been ruined by a group of strangers.
She was so angry, but there was no way she could get there by herself because there was water in the neighborhood. After discussing with her parents, she called the police directly, but under the current circumstances, no one responded.
During the day today, she discovered something new and saw several familiar faces in the surveillance footage of the new house.
It turned out that some of the people in that group were her father's friends. They were not very close to each other and were just dinner buddies. They lived in the villa area next to their community. When the water level just rose, they called to ask if her father could temporarily go to their house to take shelter.
But Zhang's mother disagreed, and she also disagreed. Her father thought that most of the men on the other side would be inconvenient for them to live in his house, and that they could move to a shelter, so he tactfully refused.
But Zhang's father did not expect that the other party not only knew that he had another house in the community, but also knew the house number. This time, he did not even ask a question, but broke into the house directly, bringing a group of people with him.
Zhang Tian was extremely angry when talking about this matter: "This is an acquaintance committing a crime! He is usually on good terms with my father, but he broke into people's homes just a few days after the flood! He is simply a robber!"
Therefore, Zhang Tian didn't want to move to the shelter. Her home was safe now, but the conditions in the shelters varied. Places with too many people were prone to chaos, not to mention the living conditions and situations.
She said that the food in her home could conservatively sustain them for another half month, so they could stay at home.
More than half a month later, Suicheng had already returned to normal, so why would there be a need to relocate?
Shu Fu didn't know how high the water level in Suicheng would rise in half a month, but she knew that Suicheng would never return to normal after this heavy rain, so she immediately replied and suggested that Zhang Tian follow the evacuation.
During a disaster, although a large group of people has many different opinions and is prone to chaos, this is a natural disaster, not a man-made disaster like a zombie virus, and now is only the early stage of the disaster. As long as the state machinery is still functioning, the large group will always be safer than individuals away from the crowd.
Unless the other party has a golden finger like her, but even if she has a golden finger, if she can leave Suicheng, she will move with the main force.
In special times, I hide in the crowd in a low profile, holding a golden finger that can give me unlimited confidence.
If conditions permit, give yourself some special care until you get to a safe area, regain your private and safe space, and then resume your comfortable rest.
This is the right choice.
Not only her, but also roommates like Chen Fa and Wu Shaoshan immediately persuaded Zhang Tian not to leave the group.
Their community is not so stable. Like Shu Fu's community, there have been several quarrels and fights.
They had a lot of food stored at home, so it was safe to stay at home, but there was only a thin layer of door panel separating the safe and the unsafe. If something really happened, the door could not stop anyone.
In the end, Zhang Tian and the others decided to evacuate Suicheng according to the official transfer plan.
It’s just that everyone’s communities belong to different areas of Suicheng and are far away from each other, so the evacuation time, direction, and shelter are also different.
If we want to meet again, we have to wait until after this natural disaster.
In fact, this was just what the other three thought. With Shu Fu, it was unlikely that they would meet again.
Because she was the only one who couldn't leave the city, as if she was fixed in a barrier.
As for whether she herself would like to participate in the official evacuation, she has not yet decided.
Considering the irreversible consequences, this behavior is a bit unnecessary.
The official resettlement site is in an industrial plant area in the suburbs. She has checked it online and found that the conditions there are good. The workshops and warehouses are tall and solid buildings without windows. There are two and three floors inside. The single floor is very tall and spacious, which is very suitable for shelter.
She can go now, but when the next evacuation starts from the suburbs, she will not be able to go along.
After leaving her current home, any subsequent shelter she finds will definitely not be as safe and comfortable as her current house.
What's more, the water level in Suicheng is currently around five to six meters, and it will take some time before it reaches the floor where she is, so it is not yet time for her to evacuate as planned.
So, stay?
In the wooden house, Shu Fu rolled over on the floor, which was of a suitable hardness and softness. He turned sideways to take a crispy kumquat from the ice bowl on the floor next to him and made a decision secretly.
Fortunately, she had spent money like water to stock up before the disaster struck. Now it is the harvest season of autumn, the time of the year when the variety of fruits on the market is the richest.
Crispy kumquats like this one are her favorite, and she stockpiled lots and lots of them...
When you bite into a kumquat, it makes a crisp breaking sound. The surface is crispy, while the inside is sweet, soft and juicy. It is completely sweet without a trace of sourness, yet sweet but not greasy. It is extremely refreshing, crispy and sweet and delicious.
After Shu Fu made up her mind, she never hesitated. She opened her tablet and played a random variety show as background music. She took out her cell phone and called the telecommunications company to activate a free unlimited data package. Then she started to search the Internet for information related to the disaster.
The internet speed was still not very good, with various glitches. She checked disaster news and people's attitudes from all over the world to speculate on the progress of the end of the world.
The progress of her raft's level 2 upgrade was stuck at 70%, and no new tasks had been spawned in the past two days. She was a little worried that the apocalypse was progressing too fast and the raft's level wouldn't be able to keep up.
She has secretly made up her mind that the next time a new task comes up, she must try to get the extra progress reward!
Perhaps because the temperature in the cabin was just right and the light was soft, she fell asleep holding her phone without realizing it.
When she woke up again, it was because the raft had ended its usage time and was automatically folded up. She fell directly from the warm and comfortable soft floor onto the cold living room tiles.
Shu Fu immediately got up, took out a thick velvet coat from the bracelet space, and wrapped herself in it.
It was pitch black all around, the electricity was still off, outside the balcony there was the sound of non-stop rain, and the house was damp and cold. The contrast was really too great.
Shu Fu wrapped her clothes tightly, found her cotton slippers in the living room, and tremblingly walked into the bedroom in the dark. Before she pulled back the quilt, the bracelet that had been silent for several days suddenly vibrated.
Could it be——
Shu Fu was overjoyed. After clicking it, she found that there was indeed a new task.
[Within six days, check in at the library of Suicheng University West Campus and you will get a 15% progress bar for level 2 of the raft. (Current progress of level 2 of the raft: 70%)
Note: Failure to complete this task will deduct 15% of the progress bar. 】
Shu Fu: ? ?
Damn, check in at Suicheng University Library!
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