At least 2,000 passengers were stranded and eight trains held at
two stations in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as
hurricane-force winds of up to 170 kilometers per hour swept
through the region on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"We'll wait until the wind trails off and visibility improves,"
said a spokesman at the railway station in the provincial capital,
Urumqi.
The Urumqi railway station has canceled four trains, including
one to Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province and three to other parts of
the region amid fears that trains might be derailed in high winds
in the Gobi desert.
This has posed a problem for many vacationers who are eager to
get back to work after the May Day holiday, which concluded on
Tuesday.
The railway station in Hami, a city in eastern Xinjiang, has
also delayed four trains bound for Urumqi.
High winds have been battering Hami for five days, and the local
meteorological station said winds would probably not ease up until
Wednesday night or early on Thursday.
The local civil affairs department said no deaths or injuries
had been reported as yet because the affected areas are sparsely
populated and have few communication links.
In the cities the weather has been less disastrous, but Urumqi
suffered heavy rains on Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, the temperature in the southern suburbs of
Urumqi dropped to minus two degrees Celsius, compared with 15
degrees over the weekend. The winds measured 38 kilometers per
hour.
Hurricane-force winds derailed 11 carriages of a train in
Xinjiang on Feb. 28, killing three passengers and injuring 34
others.
Yesterday, a top meteorological official warned that China is at
more risk of being hit by typhoons, floods and drought this year
than at any time in the last decade because of climate change.
"The situation is urgent. Temperatures in most areas will be
higher this year than in previous years, and typhoons are expected
to arrive in larger numbers than last year," said Zheng Guoguang,
director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), at
yesterday's working conference on weather forecasting.
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Heavy rainfall could hit the south, centering on the middle reaches
of the Yangtze River, as well as the north, affecting most of the
central part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, he said.
Global climate change is the major cause of the increasing
probability of such disasters, he added.
Zheng's words echoed those of E Jingping, vice-minister of water
resources, who said last month that the Yangtze River was at risk
for major flooding, and that the Yellow River, which flows through
the central part of Inner Mongolia, could also burst its banks this
year even though its water level had declined several times during
the last several decades.
Bad weather this year has already caused damage, Xu Xiaofeng,
deputy director of the CMA, told China Daily. An
unexpected cold snap last month caused serious losses in Shaanxi, Hunan, and Hebei provinces.
Meteorologists are doing what they can to prepare for inclement
weather.
"We are expected to issue warnings about potentially disastrous
weather," said Xu.
Experts at the CMA have traveled around the country making sure
satellites, radars, lightening positioning systems and other
facilities are in the right places, he added.
In addition, one volunteer at each village in Jiangxi Province, located along the middle
reaches of the Yangtze River, has been charged with monitoring
signs of natural disasters and is to report his or her findings to
local meteorological authorities.
Starting on June 1, the FY-2 meteorological satellite will
double its current speed, sending back photos indicating weather
changes every 15 minutes, Xu said.
Meanwhile, the water level in the Three Gorges reservoir has
been lowered to 147.51 meters.
"We are confident of being able to meet the challenge of a big
flood," Cao Guangjing, vice-general manager of the China Three
Gorges Project Corporation, told the Xinhua News Agency on
Monday.
"The Three Gorges reservoir can play a role in fighting against
floods," he said.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, May 10, 2007)
