OPEN LETTER: To the 17 dead of Hubei, swept away by a sky gone mad

Introduction: A letter I never wanted to write

A number that should never become routine

I am writing you this open letter because numbers alone no longer suffice to tell what happened in China's Hubei province. Seventeen dead. That figure showed up in international wire reports, sandwiched between a story on financial markets and another on a diplomatic summit, as if the death of seventeen people by tornado had become just another item among many. According to Al Jazeera, these deadly tornadoes struck central China even as Typhoon Bavi already loomed offshore, threatening to pile a new layer of disaster onto a region already on its knees.

This letter is addressed to you, residents of Hubei whom I will never meet, but also to us, Western readers, who too often have the reflex of looking away when disaster strikes on the other side of the world. Eleven of these seventeen deaths occurred in your province alone, struck by tornadoes of a rarity documented by Chinese meteorologists themselves.

Why this letter, and why now

I write this letter because Huanggang, one of the hardest-hit cities, saw a tornado lift trucks up to 30 meters into the air, according to accounts gathered by Al Jazeera. I write because a resident named Wang, quoted by the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, recounted that his brother-in-law Zhang had literally been "sucked out of his house." His words deserve to be quoted in full: "The wall cabinets, the sofas, the coffee tables, the tables and chairs disappeared in an instant... It was as if the whole building had been emptied of its contents."

This letter exists because this kind of testimony must not disappear into the ceaseless stream of world news. Hubei experienced, according to local weather experts, its first documented tornadoes since May 2021, a fact reported by specialist Wang Xiaoling of the provincial meteorological observatory.

I write this letter knowing I was not there, that I know neither Hubei nor its people, and that I hold no personal authority to speak of what you lived through. But silence in the face of seventeen deaths, however distant, feels to me like a form of complicity I refuse to accept.

Dear central China, here is what the world took away from your night of terror

A four-hour storm that took everything

According to information reported by Reuters and relayed by several international agencies, the Hubei tornadoes struck the cities of Huangshi, Huanggang, Ezhou and Xianning for more than four hours on Monday night. Winds reached speeds of 149 kilometers per hour, corresponding to level 13 on the extended Beaufort scale, a rare intensity for this part of central China, usually less exposed than coastal provinces to violent weather phenomena.

The provincial toll stands at eleven dead, more than 300 injured and one person still missing. Roughly 5,000 homes suffered damage, and 22 buildings collapsed entirely under the force of the winds. These figures, cold as they may appear, each represent a family, a home, a life upended within mere minutes.

What the tornado revealed about regional preparedness

The very rarity of these tornadoes in Hubei may be the most troubling element of this disaster. A region that has not seen a comparable event since 2021 has logically not developed the same reflexes of preparedness, early warning and resilient construction as areas more regularly struck by this type of phenomenon. This letter also wants to stress that a lack of historical frequency should never serve as an excuse to neglect preparation for extreme events, because the climate is changing faster than infrastructure can adapt.

Experts are now concerned about the possibility that tornadoes, long considered rare in central China, could become more frequent under the effect of global warming and shifting atmospheric currents in the region. This letter cannot claim to settle a complex scientific debate, but it can relay a concern documented by meteorologists on the ground.

A tornado without a recent precedent in a region is no less deadly for it. On the contrary, the absence of habit can kill more, because no one has the reflex to seek shelter before it's too late.

Dear Zhang family, your testimony crosses borders

A house emptied in an instant

Wang's account, reported by the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald and picked up by Al Jazeera, describes a scene of rare violence: his brother-in-law Zhang was reportedly sucked out of his own house by the force of the wind. This letter speaks directly to that family, without claiming to know its grief or its fear, but acknowledging that its testimony crossed linguistic and geographic borders to reach readers thousands of kilometers away.

The tornado that struck Huanggang reportedly hit a logistics company and a warehouse, according to accounts gathered on site, throwing heavy vehicles to heights that defy the imagination of anyone who has never seen a tornado at work. These images, though conveyed here in words rather than verified footage, are enough to gauge the scale of natural force unleashed on this part of China.

The weight of telling a story you did not witness

This letter acknowledges its own limits: I did not see the Huanggang tornado, I did not speak directly with Wang or with Zhang's family, and I depend entirely on accounts reported by journalists who did that fieldwork. This transparency feels essential before continuing to tell your story to a public that, like me, discovers your existence through tragedy rather than through your daily life.

But acknowledging one's limits does not mean staying silent. It means instead making sure every reported word stays faithful to what journalistic sources themselves documented, without adding details no one verified, without inventing an emotion no one voiced in front of a microphone or a notebook.

There is a necessary humility in telling a tragedy one did not live through. I would rather admit what I do not know than embroider a scene no one actually described.

Dear neighboring Guangxi, your ordeal continues in parallel

A region piling up disasters

This letter cannot ignore that Hubei was not alone in suffering during this same period. In the neighboring province of Guangxi, at least six people died and eleven others remained missing, while more than 130,000 people had been evacuated in the face of rising waters, according to Al Jazeera. More than 40 rivers and waterways were in overflow, with a red alert, the maximum level of China's climate risk-management system, declared for the region.

This simultaneity of disasters — tornadoes in Hubei, flooding in Guangxi, Typhoon Bavi already threatening the east coast — paints the portrait of a China confronting an accumulation of extreme weather events rarely observed over such a short period. Chinese President Xi Jinping personally called for "all-out" rescue efforts, according to remarks relayed by state broadcaster CCTV.

What this concentration of crises reveals

This letter wants to stress that this geographic and temporal concentration of climate disasters is probably not an isolated coincidence. Climate scientists have documented for years an intensification of extreme weather phenomena in East Asia, linked to higher ocean temperatures and shifting regional atmospheric currents. China, by virtue of its size and geography, sits on the front line of this trend.

For Chinese authorities, simultaneously managing several regional climate crises represents a considerable logistical challenge, even for a state apparatus with significant mobilization capacity. This letter acknowledges that capacity while refusing to let admiration for the emergency response turn into silence on the structural causes of these disasters.

We cannot applaud the speed of Chinese rescue efforts with one hand and close our eyes to the lack of preparedness with the other. Both truths coexist, and this letter refuses to choose only one.

Dear Western reader, here is why this letter concerns you too

Distance should not dictate indifference

This letter now speaks to you, the Western reader, who may have seen that figure of seventeen dead scroll by without pausing on it. I understand that reaction, because I have had it myself facing countless distant disasters before sitting down to write these lines. But geographic distance should never become an excuse for moral indifference.

Typhoon Bavi, already threatening the region at the time of the Hubei tornadoes, also struck American territories in the Pacific, notably Rota, an island in the Northern Mariana Islands. Mayor Aubry Hocog reported that more than 50% of the island suffered damage, with power restoration potentially taking "two to three months." This detail is a reminder that climate disasters know no ideological borders, striking American sovereign territory just as much as Chinese provinces.

A universal lesson on climate vulnerability

This letter wants to insist on a simple but often forgotten point: legitimately criticizing the Chinese regime on major strategic issues — its closeness to Vladimir Putin's Russia, its territorial ambitions, its systemic rivalry with the West — in no way excludes compassion for the civilian victims of natural disasters who have no connection to their leaders' geopolitical choices.

We, in the West, also have aging infrastructure and regions insufficiently prepared for extreme climate events. This letter wants to turn Hubei's tragedy into a warning rather than a mere distant news item, because the next exceptional weather system could just as easily strike a region we know personally.

I refuse the easy line that this tragedy does not concern us because it happened in China. The climate that killed those eleven people in Hubei is the same climate threatening our own coasts, our own rivers, our own aging infrastructure.

Dear Wang Xiaoling, your expertise deserves to be heard

What science says about the rarity

This letter also speaks to Wang Xiaoling, of Hubei's meteorological observatory, whose expertise helped put this disaster into context for international media. Her statement that tornadoes are extremely rare in this province, the last one dating back to May 2021, offers an essential scientific framework for understanding why this disaster caught so many people off guard.

This documented rarity raises a question that extends far beyond Hubei's case: how many other regions of the world will face, in the years ahead, weather phenomena they have historically never had to confront, for lack of a climate stable enough to establish reliable risk statistics? Climate science increasingly answers that this instability is becoming the new norm rather than the exception.

The responsibility to convey expertise without distorting it

This letter wants to give credit to the work of Chinese meteorologists and scientists who document these events with rigor, despite the political constraints that sometimes weigh on the full dissemination of information in China. The simple fact that experts like Wang Xiaoling can speak publicly about the rarity of these tornadoes constitutes a form of scientific transparency that deserves recognition.

This recognition, however, must never serve to minimize legitimate questions about broader political transparency in China, particularly regarding the exact origin of structural failures observed during repeated climate disasters across the country in recent years.

Chinese climate science produces serious work, even within a political system that otherwise limits press freedom. That nuance matters, and ignoring it would be just as dishonest as pretending everything is fine.

Dear shared climate future, here is what this letter hopes to change

Refusing to normalize distant disasters

This letter closes with a simple hope: that the deaths of these seventeen people in Hubei do not simply become a forgotten line in the archives of world news. Every climate disaster documented with precision, every testimony gathered with care, every piece of scientific expertise correctly reported helps build a collective memory that could, over time, improve preparedness for the next events.

Typhoon Bavi, with sustained winds reaching 162 kilometers per hour according to Bloomberg, was heading toward the coast of Fujian province as this letter was being written, threatening to add yet another layer of disaster to an already exhausted region. This continuity between successive disasters illustrates the urgency of a climate response that transcends national borders and geopolitical rivalries.

A call to memory rather than to forgetting

This open letter does not pretend to change global climate policy or resolve geopolitical tensions between China and the West. It carries the more modest ambition of refusing the quick forgetting that usually befalls disasters occurring far from our own borders.

To the seventeen victims of Hubei, to their families, to Wang who recounted the disappearance of his brother-in-law Zhang, to Wang Xiaoling who documented the scientific rarity of this tragedy: this letter exists so that your story crosses at least one more border, the one separating indifference from recognition.

I cannot give you back what you lost. But I can refuse to let your story vanish into the constant noise of world news, and that is exactly what this letter has tried to do.

Dear Xi Jinping, a question this letter dares to ask you directly

A swift mobilization, but incomplete transparency

This letter finally speaks directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose personal call for all-out rescue efforts was reported by state broadcaster CCTV and relayed by Al Jazeera. This presidential responsiveness deserves recognition without excessive reservation: mobilizing resources in the face of three simultaneous climate disasters across such vast territory represents a real logistical challenge, whatever the political system in place.

But this letter poses a direct question: why has Hubei, like so many other Chinese provinces struck by natural disasters in recent years, not received an independent public inquiry into the exact origin of the structural vulnerabilities these tornadoes exposed? The speed of the emergency response never replaces transparency about a disaster's underlying causes.

What political silence cannot erase

This letter acknowledges the limits of what a Western columnist can demand of a foreign government. But it also refuses the polite silence that would consist of praising only the rescue mobilization while never questioning the structural causes, the insufficient preparedness for increasingly frequent phenomena, and the persistent difficulty independent observers face in accessing complete information on climate disasters in China.

Moral consistency demands asking Beijing the same questions one would ask any other government confronting a series of deadly climate disasters on its territory, without complacency but also without exploiting human suffering for geopolitical ends.

Asking a direct question to a head of state who will likely never read it may seem futile. But silence in the face of power, even distant and unreachable power, has never advanced transparency anywhere in the world.

Conclusion: A letter that ends, a vigilance that must continue

What Hubei taught us in a single night

This open letter ends where it began: facing a number, seventeen dead, that now refuses to remain a mere statistic for anyone who has taken the time to read the testimonies gathered here. The Huanggang tornado, Zhang's disappearance, Wang Xiaoling's expertise, the red alert in neighboring Guangxi, and the looming shadow of Typhoon Bavi together compose the portrait of a region and a country confronting a climate acceleration that knows no ideological border.

Hubei had not seen a deadly tornado since 2021. That statistical rarity offered no real protection to the residents of Huangshi, Huanggang, Ezhou and Xianning when the sky unleashed itself for more than four hours, on a Monday night like any other until it no longer was.

Why this letter had to be written

This open letter had to be written because silence in the face of human suffering, however distant, however politically complex, constitutes a form of surrender I refuse to accept as a columnist. Acknowledging the severity of this Chinese disaster in no way erases legitimate criticism of Beijing's regime on other essential geopolitical fronts, from its relationship with Vladimir Putin's Russia to its tensions with Taiwan.

But these geopolitical criticisms and this human compassion never exclude one another. This letter simply wanted to make that point one last time, before the figure of seventeen dead disappears into the quick forgetting that too often befalls disasters occurring far from our own borders.

This letter stops here, but the vigilance it calls for should never stop. The next two-digit number that scrolls through a wire report deserves the same attention as this one, even if, honestly, I know most of them will go unnoticed.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This open letter was written with a clearly stated editorial line: pro-Ukraine, favorable to President Volodymyr Zelensky, critical of Vladimir Putin's regime and of the strategic ambitions of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea toward the West. This Chinese climate disaster was treated with the same factual rigor as any other subject, without the geopolitical editorial line altering the recognition of documented human suffering.

Methodology and sources

All facts presented in this letter come from verifiable journalistic sources, listed below, separated into primary and secondary sources. No testimony was invented, no quote was reworded beyond its faithful translation from English, and no scene was imagined beyond what the cited journalists themselves reported on the ground or through contact with witnesses.

Nature of this analysis

This open letter constitutes an editorial exercise, not field reporting. The columnist was not present in Hubei and at no point claims to have directly observed the events described. Any emotion expressed in the text reflects a personal editorial reaction to facts documented by third parties, not a direct eyewitness account.

Sources

Primary sources

Al Jazeera — Tornadoes kill 17 in central China as Typhoon Bavi looms offshore, July 7, 2026

Bloomberg — 'Gargantuan' Typhoon Bavi Threatens More Floods in Rain-Soaked China, July 9, 2026

Associated Press — Typhoon Maysak and Bavi flooding coverage, July 9, 2026

Secondary sources

Reuters — Typhoon Bavi churns towards Taiwan, China braces for landfall, July 9, 2026

Washington Post — China, Vietnam flooding from Typhoon Maysak, July 5, 2026

CGTN — Hengzhou flooding evacuation coverage, July 7, 2026