Heavy snow causes chaos in China
Heavy snow in south central China snarled roads, railways and airports yesterday, delaying millions of travellers trying to head home for the Lunar New Year holiday.
The snowfall, the worst in 50 years in some areas, has brought traffic to a standstill in five provinces, cut off a key rail link and stranded thousands of vehicles on icy highways, state media reported.
Up to 150,000 passengers were stuck Sunday at the Guangzhou railway station, the southern end of the key rail link to capital Beijing, with numbers expected to grow to up to 600,000 by Monday, the Southern Metropolitan Daily reported.
The large manufacturing and commercial city has issued emergency orders to help cope with the swelling crowds and called on local universities and other public facilities to provide shelter for stranded passengers, it said.
For the Chinese, Lunar New Year is the most important holiday, when millions of people travel for annual family reunions.
China expects more than 2.2 billion trips will be made by either rail, air or bus during the Lunar New Year travel period that runs from January 19 to March 2.
The railways ministry has forecast that a record 178.6 million passengers would travel by train over the period, up from 156 million in 2007.
But the Southern Metropolitan Daily said power outages along the Hunan provincial section of the railway led to 136 trains being cancelled on Saturday. It was not immediately clear when they would resume running.
According to China Central Television, seven airports in the hardest hit regions, including those in the major cities of Changsha, Nanjing and Hefei were closed on Saturday due to icy conditions.
Some airports were expected to reopen soon, but the one in Changsha would remain shut throughout Sunday, reports said.
Major highways in Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Anhui provinces reopened by around noon Sunday, but were expected to be closed in the evening, with more heavy snows and freezing rain forecast throughout the region, the China News Service said. Due to icy roads, long-distance bus travel was largely curtailed for much of the last week in the areas hardest hit by the snowfall.
State television showed footage of thousands of motorists and long-distance truck drivers stranded on long stretches of road as heavy snow brought traffic to a standstill.
In southern Guizhou province, 41 cities were left without electricity after the grid in the region crashed due to the bad weather, Xinhua news agency reported.
China's central meteorological bureau forecast continued bad weather in the south central part of the nation for the next three days. Snowfall in Hunan and Guizhou is rare, the bureau said.
Comments