Journalist's First Visit to Southwest Logistics Park: "Sad" Bookseller in Zhuozhou Flood | Three Days After Flood | Zou Bin | Logistics | Zhuozhou
Zhuozhou, Hebei Province is a logistics hub for the publishing industry, with nearly a hundred publishing houses, publishers, and central warehouses located in the Zhuozhou Park and surrounding areas of Southwest Logistics in Beijing. Starting from the afternoon of July 31st, the logistics park was flooded, and the warehouses of several publishing institutions were flooded.
On the afternoon of August 3rd, a reporter from Shangguan News followed Zou Bin, the person in charge of Beijing Jiwen Tianxia Cultural Development Co., Ltd., back to the logistics park warehouse to check the latest situation.
42 year old Zou Bin has been struggling in the book publishing industry for 18 years. His company stores approximately 140 million yards of books in two warehouses in Zhuozhou Park, Southwest Logistics, Beijing. On the afternoon of July 31st, floods also flooded into Zou Bin's warehouse, and all the books placed on the first floor were submerged, resulting in a loss of about 25 million yuan.
"Since last night until now, the water level has dropped by a total of 30-40 centimeters. It's too slow," Zou Bin told Shangguan News reporters. Looking inside through the office window, you can see that the water level on the warehouse floor is still about 20 centimeters high, and many books are scattered in the mud and water.
"I haven't received any notice that flood discharge will be carried out." Zou Bin told Shangguan News reporter that at 16:20 on July 29, a notice was sent in the WeChat group of the park, reminding all rental units that there was a extremely heavy rainstorm from July 29 to August 1. The city started the orange flood prevention warning, "that is to say, let us arrange personnel to be on duty and move some goods away. It is equivalent to a heavy rainstorm, and you should be prepared." According to Zou Bin, he didn't receive the notice of flood discharge and evacuation from the logistics park and the village committee where the park is located.
"If we can get advance notice, we should still be able to snatch some books," said Guo Mingchang, the person in charge of Beijing Qiandao Culture Company, who is also guarding the park.
"The top priority is to pump water. We need to quickly enter the warehouse and clean up the rotten books." Now, Zou Bin's biggest concern is that if the water level continues to rise, the books already submerged below will swell, and the books stacked on the second and third floors will also collapse, further exacerbating the losses. Due to the high temperature in the warehouse during the day, Zou Bin was also worried that the water vapor brought by the accumulated water would damage more surviving books.
The good news is that when the reporter left at 17:00 on August 3rd, there were already pumps operating in the logistics park.