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Freezing Chinese provinces hit by fog

CHANGSHA (CHINA): Heavy fog that shrouded several central Chinese provinces on Sunday morning started to disperse around midday, but traffic logjams persisted.

In Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, one of the areas hardest hit by three weeks of severe weather, dozens of flights that were delayed in the morning started to take off at midday, said officials at the Huanghua International Airport.

The fog, which reduced visibility to 50 metres on Sunday morning, had virtually closed the airport, with no take-offs or landings before 10 a.m.

Other foggy provinces, including Anhui and Jiangxi in the central-eastern region and Guizhou in the southwest, were also clearing up on Sunday afternoon. But the fog still added to the misery of China’s pre-holiday traffic chaos.

An icy section of the pivotal expressway linking Beijing and Zhuhai was jammed with more than 10,000 vehicles on Saturday night.

Road authorities in Chenzhou city said that vehicles were queued up for 70 km, even though workers were removing ice from the roads on Sunday.

One official of the Chenzhou Communications Bureau died on Saturday, reportedly due to stress from having worked several days without relief.

Lu Mingqiang (43), had been removing ice and snow from State Highway 107 on Friday afternoon and spent the whole night in his office, answering the phone, receiving instructions from the city government and hearing angry drivers’ complaints.

He collapsed into his chair at 4 a.m. on Saturday and never woke up.

As rail service in the southern Guangzhou Province began to return to normal on Sunday, with 100 trains scheduled to carry 300,000 passengers to destinations nationwide, central parts of the country remained under pressure.

The pressure was particularly high in Chenzhou, which has gone without electricity for nine days and water for eight days, despite strenuous efforts to ease the crisis.

The city government and municipal committee of the Chinese Communist Party made a public apology to residents on Saturday for having caused the inconvenience.

“We greatly regret the inconvenience caused and we’ll be with you to withstand the trial,” read an open letter that was aired on the local radio station on Saturday night.

The city of 4 million in the southern part of Hunan Province, where snow is rarely seen, was apparently unprepared for the severe weather.

With the power grid in tatters, the only lights that were seen at night were the headlights of vehicles and a few hotels that had their own generators.

Flashlights and candles have become sought-after items at local stores.

The blackout has thrown residents back to the old days: no TV and cell phones with batteries too low to use and no electricity to recharge them.

The only remaining connection to the outside world became the radio. — Xinhua

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