Special Report: China's war on snow havoc

    BEIJING, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Rail, highway and air transport systems paralyzed by freezing weather in south China are recovering gradually ahead of the Lunar New Year, but millions of people are still cold and in the dark.

    Latest information from Baiyun airport in Guangzhou, a major hub in southern China, said passenger flows reached a peak at the airport Tuesday.

A trains loaded with coal is ready to set out at a railway station of Huaibei Mining Group in Huaibei, east China's Anhui Province, Feb. 1, 2008. Various coal transport measures were taken in the group to meet urgent demand of coal due to coal shorage caused by continual snowfalls and difficult transportation in recent days.(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    "Except two airports, all airports across the Chinese mainland were open on Tuesday, though we still cancelled 27 flights, less than previous days, and all passengers stranded here were flown off by Tuesday," said a spokesman for the Baiyun airport.

    Just days ago, Baiyun airport suffered massive flight delays or cancellations as half of China had been hit by the worst snowy weather in half a century, forcing many airports to close due to alack of ice removal equipment.

    As of noon on Tuesday, service at two railway stations in the southern city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, was back to normal after 11 days of chaos, according to the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., which is under the Ministry of Railways.

    "About 3.5 million people left the province by train by Tuesday noon, and basically, all the passengers who held tickets but had been stranded at different railway stations have left," a spokesman said.

    Guangzhou, with one of the biggest concentrations of the country's 200 million migrant workers, is the southern terminal of a trunk railway line that runs northward to Beijing.

    About 350,000 train passengers left Beijing on Monday, 20,000 more than on Sunday, according to a spokesman with the Beijing Railway Bureau. He said that rail stations in the capital would probably see rider ship peak on Tuesday.

    Railway service operators in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Hefei said by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, except delays with a number of train services destined for southwest China, the other trains left or arrived on time.

    And passengers who had been stranded at the above four railway stations were all transported off, said an official with Shanghai Railway Administration, who added they had rented 75 temporary trains to help transport from the above four railway stations more people who wish to travel back home on Wednesday, the eve of Spring Festival.

    However, the situation in other parts of the country's snow-hit regions such as Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou seems unlikely to have a change in the next couple of days.

    Residents in Enshi Prefecture, Hubei Province, where more than 31,000 households were still without power as of Tuesday, have been using candles since Monday afternoon when a military cargo plane transported 500,000 candles into the area.

    Authorities said that they had decided to use the military plane to move the 28.66 tons of candles because air was the quickest way to bring light to the people of Enshi. An Enshi official said that this was the first time that the prefecture had received disaster relief via a military transport.

    Meanwhile, Chenzhou, a city of about four million in the central province of Hunan, began its 11th day without electricity and tap water. More than 5,000 electricians, including 2,000 summoned from other provinces, were struggling to repair damaged power lines and pylons.

    About 1,000 pylons and poles have collapsed under the weight ofice and snow, which means the local electricity grid that took decades to construct had been totally destroyed, experts said on Tuesday, adding it was impossible to restore the grid in a short time.

    Road traffic was in chaos in the city as traffic lights were not working. People queued in front of the few banks with generators to draw cash.

    Chenzhou residents have to collect coal and charcoal to warm themselves, which caused the prices to surge tenfold.

    State Grid has sent generators to ensure the operation of hospital, grain depot and waterworks. It also planned to use helicopters in repairing the cables and pylons and could apply for electricity-generating trains.

    Meanwhile, to keep the expressways moving, the transport authorities in eastern Zhejiang Province on Tuesday suspended all highway tolls.

    The move came after a major north-south trunk road, the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway, returned to normal on Monday after de-icing work by 1,200 troops and police over the past week.

    Freaky winter storms have plagued southern China since mid-January, leading to widespread traffic jams, structural collapses, blackouts and crop losses in 19 provinces, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

    The winter storms have killed more than 80 people, destroyed or damaged 800,000 houses and resulted in economic losses worth of 80 billion yuan, according to figures from the Red Cross Society of China.

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