China winter chaos sparks stampede

Guangzhou/Chenzhou: A stampede at Guangzhou railway station killed one person when frustrated passengers rushed to board trains after days of cancellations because of fierce cold and snow, police confirmed on Sunday.

Officials warned people to stay away from railway stations because service was recovering only slowly and was further strained as trains were commandeered to deliver emergency supplies to areas of the country battered by the worst winter weather in 50 years.

Important holiday

The crush at Guangzhou station, which had been besieged by 260,000 people, killed a migrant worker hoping to get home to celebrate the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar, the Lunar New Year.

Authorities said it was the first stampede death of the weather crisis that has killed more than 60, mainly in road accidents.

"When the crowd surged in, people who dropped things didn't dare to stop and pick them up," said Li Liujie, a factory worker who took a train to Guangzhou on Friday, the day of the accident.

"It was just too many people. There was nothing the police could do about it," Li said.

Experts forecast the freak winter could continue past Chinese New Year, which will be celebrated mid-week, and said the cold and storms in areas unaccustomed to such weather was the country's worst natural disaster in decades.

Emergency crews were still struggling to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for a week.

Mobilising the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to get traffic moving and ensure power supplies.

Firing

Marksmen fired sub-machine guns at power lines to blast off ice and soldiers drove tanks down roads to clear the build-up of snow, Xinhua reported, saying such war-like tactics were widespread as troops "combated snow disasters".

In Chenzhou, a city of 4 million in the southern province of Hunan, which has been without electricity for nine days, shopkeepers huddled under blankets while cooks warmed their hands over woks. Petrol stations there were also running low on fuel.

"We can't go on like this for much longer," said Hu Jian, selling cigarettes by candlelight.