Insurance companies in China have paid a total 917 million yuan
(128 million U.S. dollars) to meet claims from snow-stricken
victims by Wednesday, the disaster relief and emergency command
center under the State Council said late Thursday.
The insurers had paid 49.92 million yuan for agriculture-related
claims and another 2.35 million yuan for damaged rural homes, it
said in a statement.
The snow havoc had resulted in direct economic losses of about
80 billion yuan (11 billion U.S. dollars), toppled 300,000 homes,
damaged 90 million hectares of crops in 19 provinces and regions,
the Red Cross Society of China said earlier the week.
It has also killed scores of people and disrupted transport and
power services across a large swathe of the country's southern,
central and eastern regions.
Liping airport in southwestern mountainous province of Guizhou
was still closed on Thursday. All the other airports have been
reopened as the weather cleared over the past few days.
About 150,000 workers were working to bring back power services
in regions blacked out by the worst winter storm in more than five
decades during the Lunar New Year, which fell on Feb. 7 this year,
the center added.
By 5 p.m. Thursday, the State Grid Corp. of China had restored
power supply to 20.38 million households. By Thursday noon, the
smaller China Southern Power Grid had successfully repaired 4,276
power transmission lines and was working on the remaining 2,498
lines, according to the center.
The center said late Wednesday that electricity was partly or
fully restored to 164 snow-stricken counties in China, including
Chenzhou city, central province of Hunan and the hardest hit.
The remaining five counties blacked out by the severe weather
were using portable generators as the power came back just in time
for the Lunar New Year holiday.
In a bid to ease power coal shortage, the center has said 2,282
coal mines, or 63.8 percent of the nation's coal production
capacity, would operate normally during the Spring Festival. The
percentage was 23.2 points higher than originally planned.
The China Meteorological Administration took weather officials
off severe alert status on Wednesday, as forecasts for rain and
snow were downgraded for central, eastern and southern
provinces.
As most of China was predicted to have clear weather for the
Lunar New Year holiday, the country could get a breathing space to
recover from the disaster.
(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2008)
