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GUANGZHOU, China-Crowds of frantic Chinese fought for seats Wednesday on the few trains leaving southern China, where the worst winter storms in half a century have crippled the nation's transport system during its busiest travel season.One desperate mob stormed a city bus in the main southern city of Guangzhou, mistakenly thinking it was taking passengers to the day's last departing trains. They pried open doors and elbowed their way inside as helpless police yelled, "It's not going to the station!"Train service was returning to normal on Thursday, thinning the massive crowds that have been waiting to go home for next week's Lunar New Year-a holiday that is as important in China as Christmas is in the West. For millions of migrant workers, the festival that begins Feb. 7 is their only vacation from dreary jobs in factories that feed the world's ravenous appetite for DVD players, laptops, shoes and other goods.Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have been stranded over the past days because of the blizzard. But the Railway Ministry said Thursday service had basically returned to normal on the Guangzhou to Beijing line, and extra trains were being put on the schedule.Many travelers were becoming more willing to criticize the government's response to the blizzards that have paralyzed the country's transport network in southern, central and eastern China just before one of the world's biggest annual mass movements of humanity. Before the storms, railway officials estimated a record 178.6 million people would travel by train for the holiday"If this happened in America, it would have been cleared up much faster," said factory worker He Mingtong, 48. "America has the equipment, the trucks, to clear away the snow. But we haven't had snowfall like this for 30 years or more, so we were unprepared."The situation might get worse as forecasters warned that more snow might fall in the next three days in parts of eastern and southern China.Construction worker Liu Shengren expressed a sentiment common among Chinese: The country's top leadership is on the ball while local officials are incompetent or corrupt or both.China's leaders have deployed more than 450,000 army troops and extra units of police to clear roads and help provide emergency supplies to the millions of stranded travelers, state-run media reported, saying authorities had declared an "all out war" on the crisis.The storms have caused dozens of deaths and airport closures. China's antiquated power grid, powered largely by coal, ground to a near halt, plunging many cities into darkness. The storms have caused economic losses of $3 billion since they began Jan. 10, the Civil Affairs Ministry said Tuesday...To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
