Unusually early snowstorms in north-central China have claimed 40 lives, caused thousands of buildings to collapse and destroyed almost 200,000 hectares of winter crops, the Civil Affairs Ministry said on Friday.
Nineteen of the deaths resulted from traffic accidents related to the storms that began on Monday, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.
The snowfall is the heaviest in the northern and central provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan since record-keeping began after the establishment of the communist state in 1949, the ministry said without giving detailed figures. It estimated economic losses from the storm at 4.5 billion yuan (US$659 million).
Chinese state media said some of the snow was induced through cloud seeding, although the precise amount of snowfall in all areas was not reported and it wasn’t clear what the previous records were.
Hebei’s provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, received the heaviest snowfall. In the three days ending Thursday morning, the snow accumulation there reached 55cm, the heaviest since 1955, the China Meteorological Administration said yesterday.
More than 7.5 million people have been stranded or otherwise affected by the storms, which caused the collapse of more than 9,000 buildings, damaged 190,000 hectares of crops and forced the evacuation of 158,000 people, the ministry said.
State media have reported that at least two deaths were caused by the collapse of buildings, including a school cafeteria.
Beijing has been hit by three successive waves of snow, causing havoc on roadways and forcing the cancelation or delay of scores of flights.
The capital and surrounding areas are little prepared to deal with such heavy snow, with few plows or road de-icing supplies. Snow tires and chains are almost unknown and many drivers simply leave their cars at home and turn to public transport in such conditions.
The impact has been far greater in the surrounding provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan, where highways have been closed, schools shuttered and crews sent to rescue people in their snowbound homes.
Freak snow and ice storms last year hit parts of eastern and southern China unaccustomed to such weather. Those storms paralyzed key transport systems just as millions of migrant workers were heading home for the Lunar New Year holiday, leading to more than 80 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS