Storms Batter China

China has spent the month leading up to the biggest holiday, the Spring Festival, in a nationwide battle against the biggest snow-fueled disaster since its national meteorological networks started in the 1950s.

The heavy snowfalls and sleet accompanied by abnormally low temperatures from January 10 had frozen vast southern provinces causing treacherously icy roads, downed power lines, frozen vegetables dead in the field, collapsed buildings and widespread power blackouts. The average temperatures in China's eastern, central and northwestern provinces in January were at least 2 degrees Celsius lower than those of a normal year, which slowed down the melting of snow or ice on the ground.

South China's power transmission facilities were ill prepared for such extreme weather. Frozen snow and sleet knocked out electricity lines and poles in several provinces, leaving their residents without power and railway traffic passing through these areas totally paralyzed. China Meteorological Administration (CMA) spokeswomen Jiao Meiyan explained that most electricity lines in southern provinces were designed to take the weight of 15 mm of ice, but in many areas 50 mm-60 mm of ice was on them this winter.

In worst-hit provinces, including Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu, local governments had to deal with the immediate challenges of de-icing highways jammed with stranded vehicles, recovering power supplies to affected areas and ensuring coal shipments to power plants.

Guaranteeing food supplies for urban residents became another urgent task for both central and local governments. Short supplies of farm produce in cities, whose production and shipping had been devastated by the snowfall, led to a vicious round of price rises for essential daily items.

A meeting of the State Council, or the cabinet, on February 1, decided that the top priorities were to keep road traffic moving, ensure power supplies and guarantee people's daily lives were normal. The meeting urged stronger efforts to repair damaged rail lines and stressed the importance of transporting coal and living necessities to supply Spring Festival markets. A command center was established directly under the State Council to coordinate contingency measures for coal, oil and power supply, as well as transportation and disaster relief.

By the number

The Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that by the evening of January 31, extreme weather in 18 provinces and autonomous regions had caused 60 deaths, forced the resettlement of 1.76 million people and affected 485,000 hectares of farmland. The direct economic losses had reached 5.39 billion yuan ($747 million).

By January 31, the Central Government had pooled a total of 431 million yuan ($59.9 million) into the fund for disaster relief.

The Ministry of Information Industry reported that by January 30, in snowstorm-hit areas, telecom services had been restored for 11.9 million users, which accounted for 60 those affected. The damages to telecom facilities caused direct economic losses of nearly 150 million yuan ($20.8 million).

Power the top priority

Repairing the power grid was slowed down by frozen ice on highways, which had paralyzed traffic. Blocked roads and railways also choked coal shipments to thermal power plants.
More than 30 million people were affected by snow-triggered power shortages, blacking out provinces, including populous eastern Anhui, Jiangsu and southern Guangdong, according to a Xinhua report on January 30.

In southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, villagers turned to coal oil for illumination after power was cut off amid heavy snow.

The booming province of Guangdong, which usually relies on power transmission from Guizhou and Hunan to meet demand, had to struggle with the worst power shortage in history, after the weather disrupted power transmission.

When coal shipments became stuck on the rail or highways, power plants in Guangdong, whose coal reserves dropped to an alarming level, resorted to using sea routes to ship in emergency coal supplies.

About 4.5 million tons of coal was expected to arrive in Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong, in a fleet of 125 cargo ships, some of which canceled international missions to assist in shipping coal from north to south, the Guangzhou Daily reported on January 30. It said Guangzhou port opened green passages for incoming cargo ships to unload coal promptly.
Facing a supply and demand gap of 600,000 to 800,000 kw, Guangzhou demanded people limit their use of electric heating and neon lighting at peak hours, on January 29.

In Guizhou, 12 cities and counties were still in the dark with another 19 having only partial power supplies on January 30. A total of 472 power substations ceased operation and 12 electric rail lines were affected in the province.

Meanwhile, China's coal-rich provinces and regions in the north geared up production. Xinhua reported that by January 31, shipments of coal had been multiplied by 200,000 tons by railway in Taiyuan, capital city of coal-abundant Shanxi Province. A total of 13,000 train carriages were loaded with coal each day, 3,000 more than usual.

Stranded

The weather was bitter for millions of people trying to get home to celebrate the Spring Festival, the biggest holiday. Snowstorms forced the closure of 19 airports across the region on January 28. In the airport of Changsha, Hunan, 338 delayed and canceled flights on January 27 forced over 9,000 people to wait at the airports.

In one extreme case about 500,000 passengers were stranded in Guangzhou on January 27 because the Beijing-Guangzhou railway line, a north-south trunk railway, was paralyzed by power failures in Hunan after heavy snow knocked out power transmission facilities. The local government set up simple facilities in large stadiums and conference and exhibition centers, to provide temporary shelter for stranded passengers.

The resumption of power supplies along railway lines eased chaos in the national rail network. The Ministry of Railways announced on January 31 that repairs had restored most traffic on the Beijing-Guangzhou railway line and the Shanghai-Kunming line, two major north-south trunk lines paralyzed by the storm, and put over 95 percent of nationwide railway traffic back into service. A respite in the snow also allowed the closed airports to be reopened on January 30.

Army mobilized

Four transport aircraft from the Chinese air force suspended their military tasks to fly relief materials to areas affected by severe winter weather on January 31.

Immediately after receiving a request from the State Disaster Relief Commission, the aircraft transported quilts and winter coats from bases in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, and Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, to south China. In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Lieutenant-Colonel Chen Zheming of the People's Liberation Army's emergency response group said it only took 40 minutes for the military carriers to take off after receiving the order.

One aircraft transporting supplies from Changzhi to Nanning, capital of Guangxi, finished its mission in the early morning of January 31. The remaining three, scheduled to fly from Xi'an to Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, had to put off their flights when sleet closed the airport at their destination city.

In Hunan, tanks and armored cars were put into use to break ice on the artery highway from Beijing to Zhuhai on January 28 when around 11,000 vehicles and 40,000 people were still stuck on it, some for their fifth day.

Soldiers stationed in Shaoguan, Guangdong, sent 29 military kitchen vehicles to cook meals on the spot for over 20,000 passengers stuck on 30 km of highway.

By 6 p.m. of January 30, the army and armed police forces had sent a total of 207,000 people to help with disaster relief. The army donated 419,000 quilts and 219,000 cotton-padded coats to snow-affected areas that were transported by rail, road and air.

Leaders at frontline

When Premier Wen Jiabao arrived by plane in snow-devastated Hunan on the night of January 28, the flight crew were unsure where was safe to land, and there was no plan for how to get him through kilometers of paralyzed traffic.

The flight eventually had to land at an airport in neighboring Hubei Province because of the bad weather in Hunan. He then completed his journey by train and arrived in Changsha City, provincial capital, on the morning of January 29.

Upon his arrival, he held meetings with local officials and officials in departments under the State Council on how to combat ice and snow and how to better direct the disaster relief work.

In Changsha Railway Station, Wen offered early Spring Festival wishes to the stranded passengers. "I am deeply apologetic that you are stranded in the railway station and not able to go home earlier," Wen told the passengers by loudspeaker. "We are now doing our best to fix things and you will all be home for the Spring Festival," he added.

The Premier also visited family members of three electricians who died when cleaning ice from a transmission tower. Zhou Jinghua, Luo Haiwen and Luo Changming of the Hunan Electric Power Transmission and Transformation Co. were thrown to the ground when a 50-meter tower collapsed. Zhou died on the spot and the other two workers died later in hospital.

Concluding his one-day stay in Hunan, Wen took a midnight flight to Guangzhou and appeared at the railway station to comfort stranded passengers on January 30.

In the meantime, President Hu Jintao made an inspection tour on January 31 to coal fields in Datong, Shanxi, and Qinhuangdao Port in Hebei Province, through which much of Shanxi's coal is shipped to the south. The president emphasized that coal production should be increased, and coal transport should be well organized to meet the demand of major electricity plants.

Response system

The CMA warned local governments and departments to prepare for the coming bad weather, and transportation, railway, electricity and communication departments were advised to prepare post-snow clean-up plans. The CMA also suggested that citizens in these areas should avoid unnecessary outdoor activities.

The CMA alerted the State Council of the dangers of snowstorms in early December after blizzards devastated North America and put forward suggestions on dealing with the fallout. On January 25, the CMA alarmed the third degree emergency response of the national climate disaster plan and upgraded it to the second degree on January 27. Provincial governments in Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Guangxi also went onto emergency footing on January 27.

Jiao of the CMA said the snow disaster in south China is caused by the ongoing La Niña, while deeper reasons for it lie in the escalating global warming. She said how to defend against the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events poses a challenge to China's whole society.

Yu Xinwen, a spokesman for the CMA, said improving the efficiency of China's disaster emergency system relies on more input into technical upgrades of weather forecasting equipment to increase its accuracy as well as improving the disaster emergency system, which should further coordinate the work of different departments. He said the State Council had earmarked an investment of 1.96 billion yuan ($272 million) to upgrade weather forecast accuracy for 2008.

Setting inflation soaring

Since food has a weighting of 32.74 percent in China's consumer price index (CPI), the disrupted supply of agriculture products is likely to push China deeper into the abyss of its already simmering inflation. Double-digit increases in food prices for much of 2007 drove a CPI rise in November to 6.9 percent, the highest in 11 years. This January's CPI rise remained at 6.5 percent, equaling the growth rate of the previous month.

The public felt the pressure as vegetable prices escalated across the country. In Changsha, Wuhan and other hard-hit cities in the southern, central and eastern regions, vegetable prices more than doubled. Areas not affected by snow, such as Beijing, were also affected because the vegetables and fruits growing in south China suddenly became gold due to transportation problems.

In Xinfadi Market, Beijing's largest vegetable wholesale market, daily supplies had shrunk by about one third by January 30, which drove the wholesale prices of vegetables up by around 100 percent.

Zhuang Jian, senior economist with the Asian Development Bank mission in China, said rising prices, forced up because of supply disruption caused by the snowstorms, would definitely affect the inflation rate.

"I believe the CPI for January will hit around 7 percent," he said in an interview of Xinhua. "The heavy snow will have a more immediate impact on farm produce and grain production, and the impact will be more apparent in the longer term."

The nation's economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said on January 31 that temporary price controls had been implemented in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland as of January 26. It said that the policy would limit price hikes of daily necessities ranging from meat and eggs to liquefied petroleum gas.

China harvested 500 billion kg of grain in 2007, achieving production growth for the fourth year in a row. But Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai said output still failed to meet domestic demand for the year, and the country was forced to impose duties on grain powder at the start of 2008 to limit exports and ensure domestic supply.