An unprecedented cold spell hitting half of China has caused at
least another dozen deaths, injured thousands and stranded
multitudes of travelers in the freezing weather by Sunday.
A bus carrying 41 people overturned on a slippery freeway in
east China's Jiangxi Province early Sunday, leaving five dead at
the scene and injuring 10 others. The victims included three
children, two of whom were dead and one seriously injured.
The provincial meteorological bureau has warned drivers to take
caution as continuous sleet has covered highways and all urban and
rural roads with ice. The temperature will linger below zero
Celsius across most part of the province in the following three
days, the local meteorological bureau said.
In the mountainous Guizhou Province in the southwest, a hospital
in the capital city of Guiyang has received at least 1,500 patients
in the last five days, most suffering fractures after falling on
slippery roads.
Guizhou has suffered five deaths, 1,631 collapsed homes and
widespread blackouts.
At a hospital in the Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of
Qiannan in the remote south of Guizhou, snow and sleet have cut
electricity and tap water since Jan. 15. A hospital had to save
power by canceling surgery to light up the emergency ward.
"If the power supply doesn't resume any time soon, heating will
be a real problem," said Luo Laiquan, 63, of Qiannan.
The price of charcoal had climbed from eight yuan to 14 yuan a
kilo, he said.
The local government said bad weather had also stranded more
than 40,000 passengers in at least 5,000 broken-down vehicles on
expressways between Guizhou and neighboring Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region.
"We're trying to provide them with food and water, but several
have passed out in the cold, including a new mother and her
one-month-old baby," said Huang Zhengfu, secretary-general with the
prefectural government.
He said the elderly and children were taken to a nearby hotel on
Saturday.
In the central Hunan Province, one of the worst hit areas, seven
people have died and snow is affecting the lives of 25.22 million
people in 14 cities and 112 counties across the province.
Among the dead were three power company workers who died when
their equipment collapsed as they were removing ice from a 50-meter
tall tower on Saturday afternoon.
Heavy snow has also blanketed Diqing, a Tibetan autonomous
prefecture in the southwestern Yunnan Province, starting from Jan.
19. As of Sunday morning, Shangri-La had reported 35 centimeters of
snow.
Though no deaths or injuries have been reported, the local
government estimated at least 100,000 people were affected as snow
has cut roads, power and drinking water, damaged at least 500 homes
and destroyed at least 10,000 hectares of cropland.
The northwestern Gansu Province is battling the heaviest snow in
60 years. Since Jan. 10, the continuous snow and low temperature
which plunged to minus 30 Celsius had affected more than 800,000
residents, killed 32,000 livestock, and damaged around 20,000
greenhouses for planting vegetables, according to the latest
statistics from the provincial bureau of civil affairs.
In the eastern Jiangsu Province, the heaviest snow since 1984
virtually closed the airport in the provincial capital of Nanjing
on Sunday. In several cities, the average precipitation was around
20 millimeters.
In the aftermath of the massive train delays on the trunk rail
link between Beijing and Guangzhou on Saturday, the number of
passengers stranded in Hangzhou, capital of the eastern Zhejiang
Province, soared to 30,000 on Sunday compared with 5,000 reported
on Saturday.
The delay also forced around 15,000 train passengers in Wuhan,
one of the largest cities in central China, to change or cancel
their travel plans as 17 rail lines were closed in the weekend,
according to the local railway station.
The heavy snow closed Wuhan Tianhe International Airport for
four hours on Sunday, delaying more than 40 flights, stranding over
2000 passengers, according to the airport.
The delays of at least 136 trains, a result of power failure,
stranded almost 150,000 passengers at Guangzhou Railway Station on
Saturday night.
Officials in Guangzhou have predicted as many as 600,000 people
will be stranded at the Guangzhou railway station if the problems
are not solved by Monday.
Local authorities said they were trying to provide shelter to
passengers at schools and other public facilities close to the
railway station, including the subway tunnels after the subway
stops operation at midnight.
"I nearly burst into tears when I saw them waiting here,
hopelessly and hopefully," said Fu Yufen, leader of the Hangzhou
Railway Station in eastern Zhejiang Province where almost 30,000
passengers were stranded this weekend.
As the temperature drops to minus one Celsius in Hangzhou,
passengers, many of whom were rural migrant workers heading home
for the traditional Lunar New Year, crowded in the waiting room or
stood in the square, holding umbrellas against sleet or cuddling
each other to keep warm.
Local authorities opened nearby theaters to passengers and the
tea bar in the station has also been accessible to passengers for
free.
"This is a hard journey home, and we would not let passengers
suffer hunger and coldness any more," said local authorities.
(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2008)