Rare downpours destroy traditional cave homes

Rural residents living in cave houses on northwest China's Loess Plateau had never considered abandoning their dwellings until continuous downpours wreaked havoc across the region throughout July.

Rainstorms have battered the city of Yan'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province and triggered landslides and floods, leaving 42 people dead and 133 injured as of the end of July.

Many deaths were caused by the collapse of ramshackle cave houses.

The plateau's climate is typically quite arid, but in recent weeks, it has experienced rainfall up to five times greater than that seen in previous years.

Yuan Xiaoli, a resident of the village of Shangyi, said he never thought that the cave houses he lived in for over 20 years would be destroyed by the storms.

About 95,000 cave houses have been destroyed in the city over the past month, leaving 100,000 people homeless.

"We have been living in cave houses for generations and never thought they would collapse. Elderly people living in the village have never seen such heavy rain," Yuan said.

About 30 million people live in cave dwellings on the plateau.

"It is easy to build a cave house, as the construction materials that are required to build one can easily be found," said Wang Jun, a professor at the Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology who researches such dwellings.

Yao Yinliang, secretary of the Yan'an municipal committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said heavy rain can easily trigger landslides in the region, as it is largely made up of loess.

The foundations of the cave houses become loose when it rains and persistent rain can be a threat, Yao said.

The municipal government hopes to relocate cave house residents to safer places over the next five to eight years, particularly those living in areas that are vulnerable to landslides. About 250,000 Yan'an residents still live in cave houses.

Wang said the government should roll out an architectural standard for cave house construction and ask local governments to supervise their construction to ensure that they are safe.

Reliable standards will help ensure that cave houses will be able to withstand natural disasters, Wang added.

However, some rural residents have already decided to move out of their cave houses.

Li Dongxia, a resident of Yichuan County, which was hit hard by the downpours, said she was reluctant to leave her home, but was ultimately forced to after it became uninhabitable due to the rain.