At least five people were killed and another five injured in a seaplane crash on Wednesday in Shanghai.

The nine-seat seaplane, operated by Joy General Aviation, crashed into a bridge along the Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway at 12:15 pm, 10 minutes after it took off from Jinshan City Beach for its trial flight.

Those aboard included the pilot and co-pilot, district government officials as well as reporters who were there to observe.

The pilot, 63, has an accumulated flight time of over 30,000 hours.

The injured were sent to a hospital in Jinshan, where one of the seriously injured was undergoing an operation.

“There was a sudden left turn, almost at 90 degrees. Then the co-pilot yelled ‘a bridge!’ Then it crashed into the bridge. It was like a nightmare,” said Wu Liangliang, a Shanghai Television Station cameraman, who survived the crash.

The wreckage was removed from the water by early afternoon. The municipal government said a full investigation has been launched.

Joy General Aviation, the largest seaplane operator in China, is a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corp of China.

The craft is manufactured by US-based Textron Aviation, which sells brands such as Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker.

Flying at an altitude of 600 meters and with a speed of 260 kilometers per hour, light seaplanes are increasingly used in some Chinese cities for tourism, as they allow passengers to get a clear view of the scenery below.

A seaplane can shorten the journey from Jinshan to Zhoushan from hours to about 30 to 45 minutes. Jinshan district plans to build itself into a hub for seaplanes in East China.

China has relaxed its ban on the use of low-altitude airspace since 2013, leaving ample room for lucrative business opportunities, related to aviation.

From the south to the north, with record-breaking downpours, flooding, landslides and loss of lives, China is coping with a seemingly endless string of extreme weather conditions and disasters this summer. And it is bracing for more.

President Xi Jinping has called for the nation to be fully prepared for the huge floods that are expected along some of the country’s major rivers.

The president’s call was made on Wednesday as China’s vast and drought-prone northern regions were hit by the strongest downpours this year, triggering floods and landslides that killed 13 people and left 62 missing.

Livelihoods of 1.73 million people in 131 counties of six provinces were affected, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

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President Xi also warned local officials that they would not be treated leniently if they failed to perform their duty and live up to the central government’s expectations in the forthcoming disaster prevention and control efforts.

Protection of life must be the priority, the president said.

Beginning on Tuesday, downpours in Shanxi, Hebei and Hubei provinces hit a record high for precipitation before torrential rains spread to much of northern China on Wednesday and brought the most precipitation this year, said Ma Xuekuan, chief forecaster of the Central Meteorological Observatory.

Many northern cities raised their flood alert to the highest level on Wednesday, including Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province.

In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, the strong downpours are expected to continue in the coming days, the meteorological observatory said, warning of the likelihood of more geological disasters.

Before striking northern China, torrential rains hit many provinces in southern and eastern regions of the country, especially in June, causing floods and landslides and heavy casualties.

In the first six months of the year, “China has seen 172 deaths, 99 injuries and another 19 people missing from 2,232 geological disasters nationwide, with the casualties increasing by 75 per cent year-on-year,” said Wang Guanghua, vice-minister of land and resources.

The increase in casualties was blamed on the heavy rainfall since the start of the flooding season on March 21. Precipitation saw a year-on-year increase of 21 per cent over the average rainfall in past years, and this worsened geological disasters like landslides and mudslides, the ministry said in a statement.

Geological disasters like landslides usually peak from July to September, thus leaving the country facing higher risks than usual, especially in southern mountainous areas.

“The northern regions, which previously did not have large rainfall and therefore the mountains’ soil is loose, will face high risk of geological disasters, requiring full preparation from governments,” said Wang, the vice-minister.

The numbers of deaths and injuries in southern regions are the highest since 2011, doubling the average numbers of recent years.

The report from the ministry and the China National Commission for Disaster Reduction said the flooding, hailstorms and geological disasters have been the major disasters in the first six months, affecting 68.8 million people and causing 505 deaths and 89 billion yuan (S$18.1 billion) in direct economic losses.

Callista Olzheim spent much of the past 14 years searching for her birthparents, and wondering why they abandoned her.

She was adopted by Dutch woman Erika Olzheim when she was 18 months old, and has just concluded another trip to China with her adopted family.

“Knowing nothing about your past is difficult”, said Erika, 53, who brought Callista to Huainan to search for her birthparents.

“I want to know if they are still alive, why they abandoned me and if I have siblings”, said Callista, whose younger brother is also adopted and originally from Taiwan.

It is believed that Callista was born in Huainan, Anhui province, on Dec 26, 2002, and was abandoned the next day in the city’s railway station.

After being found, she was sent to the Huainan Children’s Welfare Home and spent 18 months at the orphanage until Olzheim adopted her.

Though the girl has been living happily in Duiven, the Netherlands, for the past 12 years, a growing curiosity has driven her to seek out her natural parents.

On this year’s trip, she was joined by Erika’s twin sister Andrea De Baar, from Zevenaar, the Netherlands, and two of her sons who were adopted from Harbin, Heilongjiang province, and Yixing, Jiangsu province.

The sisters said all available records pointed to the children having been abandoned.

In the search for Callista’s family, they first tried distributing fliers around the Huainan railway station and then turned to the local police, who took a blood sample from Callista to run a DNA test. It returned no positive results.

Before and after the Huainan trip, they had tried similar methods in Harbin and Yixing for 14-year-old Stefan De Baar and 12-year-old Vincent De Baar, with no luck.

Callista and Stefan said they were driven mostly by curiosity, not hatred of their birthparents.

“You don’t know what kind of people they are and you can’t really judge,” said Stefan.

Erika has tried to explain to Callista about China’s one-child policy, which was replaced last year by another allowing each couple to have two children.

“That might be a possible reason for their abandonment,” Erika said.

“They might have been poor－otherwise, they may have taken good care of me,” said Callista.

When Erika and her husband decided to adopt Callista, they already had three birth children. The De Baar family also has five children, including their two adopted sons.

Erika said they adopted the girl and her younger brother “because we want to have a big family and also give the abandoned kids a chance to live a better life by providing them with a good education and a happy family”.

During their time in Huainan, the two families made a trip to Callista’s old orphanage, which they had visited in 2008 and 2014.

This time they could only look in from the outside, as they were not aware of a new regulation, which stipulates that foreigners must first get approval from the provincial government’s civil affairs department before visiting children’s welfare homes.