On August 3, Colonel Zhou Kunxun, political commissar of the Chinese People's Armed Forces Department (PAFD) of Shulan City in China's northeastern Jilin Province, sacrificed his life when rescuing the flood-trapped people at the age of 46.
Zhou Kunxun, male and Han nationality, was born in Queshan County of central China's Henan Province in May 1977. He was a member of the Communist Party of China, and held a bachelor's degree. He joined the military in December 1994, acting as a political commissar of the PAFD of Shulan City with the colonel rank while alive.
At 19:00 on August 3, continuous heavy rainfall flooded Jinma Town, Kaiyuan Town, Qili Township and other regions located downstream of Mopanshan Reservoir in Shulan City, with some bridges collapsed and roads damaged, posing significant risks to the stricken areas. Upon request of the Shulan municipal government, the local PAFD quickly gathered military rescue troops, loaded disaster relief supplies and coordinated multiple parties to the flood-deluged regions.
At about 23:30 on August 3, Zhou led a team to Jinma Town to command the militia to carry out victim evacuation and transfer mission. During the rescue, the command vehicle he was in was overturned by the rapids and caught in the flood. He exerted all energies to push the driver outside regardless of his own safety and then managed to escape from the car, but was swept away by the flood due to exhaustion from continuous rescue work.
At 4:59 on August 4, the driver Ding Wenlong was extricated 3 kilometers downstream from the accident site. At 7:25 on August 6, Zhou's body was recovered and brought ashore 2.5 kilometers northwest of the point of occurrence.
Since his enrolment, Comrade Zhou Kunxun had been awarded a collective third-class merit citation and an individual third-class merit citation. At the critical moment when the safety of people's lives and property were threatened, he never backed away from the front line of disaster relief, evacuating more than 2,000 trapped civilians until died heroically.
