The Three Spirit Stones

Chapter 159 Flood

Today is the third day of rain in Kaifeng!

The sky seemed to have a hole in it. It rained from morning to night, and from night to morning, with no sign of stopping.

Cheng Yu and the others stood in the office on the second floor, looking at the heavy rain outside with a worried look on their faces.

"This rain is expected to continue to fall,"

"The rain is so heavy? If it continues like this, the consequences will be disastrous,"

"We should be fine here. When the industrial park was first built, all the foundations were raised. We are worried that the land in Beijing is low and will be flooded if it rains a little harder. It is probably flooding now with the heavy rain."

"Husband, what should we do?"

"...Yuechan, first send people to clean up the factory buildings that can accommodate the victims, and prepare a large amount of food, coal briquettes and other daily necessities."

"A Yuan, ask Dayong and the others to prepare a large number of ships for rescue,"

"Also, send someone to take my mother to stay with Ah Cai first, and we'll deal with the rest as the situation dictates."

"Yes~,"

After he gave his instructions, everyone went about their business.

Throughout the history of the Northern Song Dynasty, floods occurred frequently. The city of Bianjing alone experienced several floods.

When Cheng Yu was planning to build the industrial park, he had already taken this into consideration, so the preferred site was an area with high terrain. A lot of financial and material resources were also spent on drainage and flood control. Later, when cement became available, the previous area was gradually raised.

Because of his foresight, the industrial park was not affected by the floods in Henan Province.

But the previous ones were not too severe, the flooding was not high, and the water receded quickly.

But this time it was different. It rained heavily for several days in a row, and even some parts of their industrial zone were flooded.

If this continues, the consequences will be disastrous.

On the fifth day the rain finally stopped.

Yelu Yuan sent all the ships he had gathered to the capital to participate in the rescue.

As expected, the city of Bianjing was now surrounded by floods. Except for the taller buildings, the surrounding villages were all flooded. In many places, the water reached the roofs and tree trunks. Countless villagers climbed on the roofs and trees to take refuge.

But only the tiled houses can be climbed up. If it was a thatched house, the whole house would have been washed away long ago.

Wherever the rescue boats went, there were corpses of people and animals floating in the water from time to time.

A human tragedy!

Rescue boats kept transporting the victims back and forth, but there were too many of them and the boats had to be rowed manually, so the efficiency was not high.

Many disaster victims have not had food or water for several days, and riots have occurred in some shelters.

The number of people that a ship can carry at a time is limited. The principle is to carry the elderly, women and children first, and then the strong and healthy young people.

But because of this, some shelters actually throw helpless women and children into the water to drown in exchange for the men being rescued faster.

In some places, strong men would snatch away all the edible things. The old, weak, women and children, who were already in poor health, would die faster due to lack of food and water.

Fortunately, Sun Yuechan had anticipated this situation. After preparing fresh water and dry food, each boat would be fully loaded with supplies when it went out. When it arrived at each refuge point, water and food would be distributed first to the victims who could not get on board. This way, even if not all people could be accommodated at once, the remaining people could still hold on for a few more days.

On the tenth day, the floodwaters had completely receded.

The entire disaster area looked devastated at a glance. Countless people had their homes destroyed and were left homeless. The mud in the city of Bianjing was half a leg deep, and everyone was busy clearing roads and houses.

In Chengshi Industrial Park, only a few factories are still operating normally, and most factories have already stopped working.

The workers cleaned up all the available space to accommodate the disaster victims.

More and more disaster victims came here, many of them from villages around the capital.

But gradually, disaster victims from all over Henan Province arrived one after another. Now more than a month has passed, and more and more disaster victims are coming here with their families for shelter.

The industrial park is now full of disaster victims and overcrowded. Every day, people have to eat, drink, defecate and urinate. The food consumption alone is an astronomical figure.

Sun Yuechan roughly counted the number and found that there were about 300,000 people.

These obligations, which should have originally belonged to the imperial court, now all fall on the shoulders of Cheng's Industry. Even if Cheng Yu is as rich as a country, he will not be able to bear it for a long time.

Because of this incident, he had long gone to the palace to ask for an audience with Zhao Heng, asking him to send officials to provide disaster relief and resettle the victims to help them rebuild their homes.

Zhao Heng did indeed issue an imperial decree.

Because the Northern Song Dynasty court always had regulations for the people affected by disasters, disaster relief officials only needed to open the Changping Warehouse to provide relief to the victims according to the system and then complete follow-up work.

The problem came from the Transportation Department, which was in charge of the finances of a route and had considerable power. The food and other materials used for relief often had to be transported by it.

Because of this flood, the city of Bianjing was also severely affected. Overnight, many residents lost their homes and property.

They are now also disaster victims. There are hundreds of thousands of permanent residents in the capital, and nearly 100,000 people were affected by the disaster.

The eating, drinking, defecating and urinating of 100,000 people still put a lot of pressure on the imperial court.

Therefore, the food and goods transported by various transport companies must first be supplied to the capital, and any surplus will be supplied to Cheng's Industry.

Cheng Yu went to meet with the transport envoys, and without exception they all cried poor and difficult. They all promised to supply him with food and supplies as soon as they had surplus, but the time and date were uncertain.

Fortunately, the Henan section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Zhenzong Railway has been repaired. From now on, a steady stream of supplies are shipped in from Hangzhou every day, and food is also transported from Yanjing by steam trains.

Hundreds of thousands of people stranded in Cheng’s Industry receive food once a day. Although it is enough to barely fill their stomachs, the common people do not have high demands. They are satisfied as long as they can stay alive.

Cheng Yu and everyone had held many meetings to discuss the resettlement of these hundreds of thousands of people. In the end, they decided to build a huge resettlement area 20 miles away from the industrial park.

The industrial park is now full of disaster victims. Almost all factories have stopped working. The losses incurred for each day of suspension are enormous. Countless goods cannot be delivered as scheduled. The compensation alone for such a long time is an astronomical figure.

What we need to do now is to relocate the disaster victims in the most important factory area in an orderly manner and allow the factory to resume operations.

The relocated disaster victims were arranged to work in the construction areas and were paid wages.

In this way, work-for-relief was carried out. After half a month, one-fifth of the park had been cleared, and dozens of factories immediately resumed work and production.

Everything seemed to be going in a good direction, but suddenly one day bad news came.

The tracks of both railways were damaged at the same time.

The damage was severe, with many sections of rails stolen and the roadbed destroyed.

What’s worse is that many railway guards were killed.

When Cheng Yu heard the news, he was so angry that he started cursing.

He had been busy and exhausted during this period. He knew that someone was taking advantage of the flood to mess with him.

Because according to intelligence, the reason why so many disaster victims from Henan traveled thousands of miles to seek refuge here was because someone deliberately spread the news.

They said that as long as you go to Cheng's Industry, you will have food to eat and a place to live, and if you are lucky, you can stay there to work and earn money.

It is for this reason that these disaster victims would travel such a long distance with their children.

In fact, the Northern Song Dynasty government already had a set of regulations for disaster relief.

When a natural disaster occurred in a certain area, local officials would immediately report it and then open the Changping granary, charity granary and other grain storage facilities to provide disaster relief.

Now that all the disaster victims have gone to Cheng Yu, these local officials are happy to have some free time.

Is there anyone who would rather share the responsibility than do anything else?

Moreover, as long as the disaster victims walked along Jinghang Zhenzong Avenue, they could easily reach Chengshi Industry.

It is so convenient that hundreds of thousands of disaster victims gathered here in just over a month.