Stranded at Spring Festival

For millions of migrant workers, the Spring Festival is the one chance in the year to go home. ABC News reported on January 28 that rail and air travel had been disrupted for more than two weeks. About 200,000 people were crowded outside Guangzhou station, and the number stranded could reach 600,000. Many waited for days in the cold rain in front of the station, and some finally gave up on going home.

The roads were frozen too. Al Jazeera, citing Xinhua, reported that more than 10,000 vehicles were once stuck in a queue over 75 km long on an icy expressway in Hunan. On January 29 Wen Jiabao drove along the Beijing–Zhuhai Expressway to Majiahe in Xiangtan to thank the grid workers there, and on the way he met Changsha–Xiangtan expressway workers who had been fighting the ice for six days in a row.

Planes were grounded as well. On January 28, flights were halted in at least 10 cities, and four expressways in Shanghai were closed indefinitely.

The Beijing–Guangzhou line stopped because Hunan lost power: more than 136 electric trains were stuck on the tracks. The Ministry of Railways sent about 100 diesel locomotives to haul them and rerouted 63 trains over the Beijing–Kowloon and Shanghai–Kunming lines. Traffic on the Beijing–Zhuhai expressway between Hunan and Guangdong came to a standstill, with 60,000 people stuck in 20,000 vehicles. In Anhui, 11,000 vehicles were jammed along a 40 km stretch. From January 25 to 31, 5.8 million rail passengers were stranded across the network and more than 8,000 freight trains were affected.

The crowd at Guangzhou station peaked at about 600,000. On the afternoon of February 1, Li Hongxia, a watch factory worker from Hubei, arrived at the station when 260,000 passengers filled the square and the streets around it. At 9 pm she was knocked to the ground and trampled as the crowd pushed into the square, and she died early the next morning, the first such death of the crisis. Some 12,000 police were on duty at the station every day. "We have to say sorry to those who couldn't get tickets," said Wang Yongping, spokesman for the Ministry of Railways. Guangzhou opened six schools, each able to shelter 1,100 stranded passengers.

New Year away from home

The railways had forecast 178.6 million passengers between January 23 and March 2. When the snow came, ticket sales were stopped for some trains in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Beijing, Jinan and Kunming. Guangdong, home to 30 million migrant workers, told local officials to persuade them to put off their trips and to try to keep more than 65% of them in the province over the holiday. The Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions laid on 50 free film shows and invited 3,000 workers to a party on the Pearl River.

By February 1, 11.2 million of Guangdong's 19 million migrant workers had said they would stay. In the end 12.6 million stayed, while 4.6 million got home once transport resumed.

There was plenty for them to do: free entry to 18 museums and 157 parks, 350 performances and 250 other events. Shenzhen handed out 20,000 phone and transport cards to stranded workers and opened more than 900 cultural events to the more than 2 million who stayed. On the afternoon of February 5, Shenzhen's Bao'an District held a group wedding for 12 couples from other parts of China, and more than 140 relatives and friends enjoyed a free wedding banquet.

Power lines and coal

The weight of the ice brought down towers and poles. By the end of January, 17 provinces, regions and municipalities had blackouts affecting more than 30 million people. In northern Guangdong alone, more than 4,150 lines of China Southern Power Grid were cut. With the railways cut, power stations were getting less than a quarter of their usual coal. Many had only a few days' supply left and turned to shipping coal by sea.

Chenzhou in Hunan was one of the worst-hit cities. The city of 4 million had no power or running water for more than ten days, and the price of candles and coal briquettes soared. On Lunar New Year's Eve, February 6, much of Chenzhou was still dark, and more than 3,000 electricians, soldiers and armed police were working on the lines.

Repairing the grid cost workers their lives. The Hunan grid sent more than 10,000 people to fix it. On January 26, Zhou Jinghua, Luo Haiwen and Luo Changming were killed when a tower collapsed. On January 28, Xiao Jianhua, 37, fell 10 metres to his death when the pole he was on collapsed under the snow. Cao Xianglin, 42, had been on emergency repairs in the Hunan mountains since January 13. Exhausted after more than two weeks of overtime, he finished a repair job on a tower in Chenzhou on the 29th and died of a heart attack at the top of the 21-metre pylon.

Ice on power cables in Hunan was 30 to 60 mm thick. In Hubei, 27 pylons and more than 20 km of the 500 kV line linking the Three Gorges Dam to the Central China grid were damaged. The repairs were up in the mountains at 1,000 metres, in 60 cm of snow, where more than 600 PLA soldiers and 2,300 workers were at work. The Central China grid mobilised 100,000 workers in all.

A city in the dark, and rising prices

In Chenzhou, a city of 4.6 million, a baby boy celebrated his first month on the 10th day of the power and water cuts. His parents nicknamed him Lele, or "Happy", because he had brightened a home that relied on candles and coal briquettes for warmth. His father, Cao Jian, said onions had reached 20 yuan per half kilo, peppers and other vegetables 15 yuan, and candles and briquettes about 5 yuan each. Soldiers came to the neighbourhood twice a day with water, a bucket for each household, and that was the only time he left home. About 5,000 workers were repairing lines in the city, and two employees of the main power supplier, Chendian International, had died on the job.

Prices rose in the north too. Huang Tianlu, a wholesaler at Beijing's Xinfadi market, said cucumbers had gone from 5 yuan a kilo to 8.2 in ten days and broccoli from 2.8 yuan to 8.2. More than ten trucks of southern vegetables used to arrive each day; now only one or two came. About 12,000 vegetable trucks from Hainan were stranded on the roads, and Wuhan let vegetable trucks use its highways toll-free.

Farms were hit hard. 105 million mu (7 million hectares) of farmland was affected, and 11.3 million mu lost its whole harvest. The cold killed 874,000 pigs, 85,000 cattle, 459,000 sheep and 14.4 million poultry. The State Forestry Administration said 17.3 million hectares of forest in 18 provinces, about a tenth of China's forests, had been damaged, with nearly 90% destroyed in the worst-hit areas. Forestry losses had reached 16.2 billion yuan by January 31.

Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao

On the night of January 28, Wen Jiabao flew from Beijing to Hunan. Bad weather forced the plane down in Hubei, and he went on by train, reaching Changsha on the morning of the 29th. At Changsha station he told stranded passengers through a megaphone: "I am deeply apologetic that you are stranded in the railway station and not able to go home earlier. We are now doing our best to fix things up and you will all be home for the Spring Festival." He also visited the families of the three grid workers who had died and bowed to them: "As I face you here today, I cannot find enough words to express my condolences. Please accept a bow from me."

Less than 24 hours later, Wen was at Guangzhou station. "The Premier was in Hubei the day before yesterday and in Hunan yesterday. I do not expect him to come to Guangzhou today despite the rain. I feel warmth in my heart," one passenger said. On February 1 he flew to Hunan again, and on the 2nd, on a train to Chenzhou, he told the country: "I often hear people express out of their own will thankfulness to the government. But those we really should thank are the masses."

On January 31, President Hu Jintao took a lift more than 400 metres down the Datangtashan coal mine in Datong to meet miners who had been working overtime in temperatures of minus 20 °C. "Disaster-hit areas need coal and the power plants need coal," he told them. He then went to Qinhuangdao Port and asked dockworkers to keep their equipment in good order and load coal onto ships more efficiently. From February 5 to 8 Hu toured hard-hit Guangxi and spent the Spring Festival there. He told staff of the Guangxi branch of China Southern Power Grid: "You have done a tough job, bringing people a bright and warm Spring Festival. The Party and people thank you."

The front line and the public mood

Al Jazeera, citing Xinhua, reported that more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and reservists were sent out to clear ice and snow, repair the grid and reopen roads. On the evening of January 31 the National Development and Reform Commission said traffic jams in the disaster areas had eased now that the army was helping clear the ice, and power was back in most of the south except Hunan, Jiangxi and Guizhou. The Ministry of Public Security said all the airports in provincial capitals and other major airports had resumed flights.

The PLA General Staff and General Political Departments had issued a joint order on January 28 telling troops in the affected areas to help local governments fight the snow. By the next day, 158,000 PLA troops and armed police and 303,000 militia and reservists had joined in, and more than 992,000 police were working around the clock on the roads. Police in Hunan sent daily text messages on road conditions to the province's more than one million drivers.

In Anhui the army sent tanks to break the ice on the expressways. The two tanks set off on the evening of January 31, and the traffic jams were so bad that a drive of two and a half hours took them more than 30. By February 3 they had cleared 110 km of the Hefei–Anqing and Hefei–Wuhu expressways. In Sichuan, helicopters dropped 5,500 quilts.

By early February the army had used 34,000 vehicles, cleared 17,000 km of highway and moved 4.38 million people, and more than 180 generals were at the front line. Tongren airport in Guizhou had been closed for 23 days, with ice 13 cm thick on the runway. Big machines would have damaged the runway, so more than 1,000 soldiers chipped away at it with spades. "Eight spades were allocated to our squad but soon three were broken," said Xie Linhong, an 18-year-old soldier.

Internet users wrote on bulletin boards that they felt encouraged after seeing the Premier at the stations on television. Daniel Cotterall, a New Zealander living in Beijing, said Wen "was interested in people's real problems, especially those of farmers and migrant workers".

The lights come back on

Early on February 20 a 110 kV line in Pingtang County, Guizhou, was repaired 33 hours ahead of schedule. With that, all 90 counties in China Southern Power Grid's area that had lost power were reconnected. In Guangdong, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi, 7,503 power lines and 859 substations had been damaged, and the rural grids of Guizhou, Shaoguan in Guangdong and Guilin in Guangxi were almost wiped out. About 140,000 workers and soldiers took part in the repairs.

Across China, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission counted more than 36,000 damaged power lines and nearly 2,000 damaged substations, with direct losses of 18 billion yuan. China's high-voltage lines are designed to carry about 10–15 mm of ice; this time the average was twice that, and up to 60 mm in places. State Grid set aside 39 billion yuan to rebuild. Telecoms suffered too: China Telecom alone had 100,000 stations damaged.

The rebuilding brought big orders. At Far East Cable in Jiangsu the production line ran through the holiday, and Zhang Hua, a 31-year-old engineer, stayed at work instead of going home. The company expected its cable sales to grow by at least 50% that year.