Beijing Floods Kill 37, Millions Affected by Rainfall Deluge [PHOTOS/VIDEO]

Serious concern has risen over the basic infrastructure in Beijing after a 20-hour torrential downpour wreaked havoc and claimed 37 lives.

Millions have been affected by the rains and floods and nearly 60,000 people have been evacuated from their houses.

While vehicles remain submerged in the flooded streets of the city, many of the roads have been closed. Landslides were also reported in two districts.

Out of the 37 victims, 25 drowned, six were killed in building collapses, five were electrocuted and one person died due to lightning strike, according to the official count.

"I noticed the weather forecast on Friday, but we did not know the rain would be so overwhelming and flood my home so quickly. We left the neighbourhood barefooted, because the flood brought so my mud that our shoes got stuck," 25-year old Guo Yanwei from Fanghan district told China Daily.

The rainfall in the city was 46 centimetres in Fangshan area, the highest ever, according to official reports. The average rainfall in Beijing was 17 centimetres, the highest in nearly in six decades.

As people in downtown Beijing are trying to claw their way back to normal life, the outskirts, including Fangshan, Mentougou and Shijingshan remain in deep waters.

The local government estimates that the floods have caused a damage of 10 billion Yuan (£1 billion), according to the country's official newspaper China Daily.

Questions have been raised whether the basic infrastructure was compromised in the Chinese capital during the modernisation process.

"If so much chaos can be triggered in Beijing, the capital of the nation, problems in urban infrastructure of many other places can only be worse. In terms of drainage technology, China is decades behind developed societies," one of the commentaries read in the daily Global Times.

People in the city have also used the country's popular microblog service Sina Weibo to vent their anger against Beijing's infrastructure.

"This is China's capital of Beijing. Look what happens when it's hit by a rainstorm. The drainage systems of Rome that were built 2,500 years ago are still in use and you can drive a car through them. Can a dog get through Beijing's drainage tunnels?" wrote a user Wen Hui on the site, reported the Associated Press.