10,000-car backup as ice shuts Chinese road

Trains returning to normal, but millions without power as cold continues

BEIJING – Railway service inched back to normal Sunday in southern China, a day after one person died in a stampede by frustrated train passengers who were stranded for days because of snow ahead of an important holiday.

More than 10,000 vehicles were backed up on an icy section of a highway in central China’s Hunan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The vehicles were backed up for nearly 45 miles, even though workers were removing ice from the roads Sunday, it said.


The freakish weather is now in its fourth week, throttling the country’s densely populated central and eastern regions as tens of millions of travelers scramble to board trains and buses to return home for this month’s Lunar New Year holiday.

The weather has ripped down power lines and disrupted trains and road transport. Damage has been estimated at $7.5 billion and at least 60 people have been killed, mostly in traffic accidents.

On Saturday, frustration boiled over among passengers stranded at the Guangzhou train station where a stampede to get on a train crushed Li Hongxia, a watch factory worker who was trying to get home to the central province of Hubei, Xinhua reported.

AP