Winter storms kill 60 in China

2008-02-01 21:27

Beijing - China's worst winter storms in half a century have killed at least 60 people - and 10 more days of severe cold, snow and freezing rain are coming, officials involved in relief efforts said on Friday.

Big cities were plunged into darkness and stock prices dropped on weather worries.

Yet, while conceding at least 53.8 billion yuan in direct economic losses, officials said the central government's emergency management system - put in place after the 2003 epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS - helped prepare them for the weather relief efforts.

"These past years we've been putting a big emphasis on emergency management," Zhu Hongren, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planning body, said.

"That's made a big difference, especially to communications," Zhu said at a rare inter-ministerial news conference to publicise disaster relief work.

Officials at the conference said that 60 people had died due to the winter onslaught, and that 10 more days of bad weather were likely.

The unusually harsh weather hit China's densely populated central and eastern regions just as tens of millions of travellers sought to board trains and buses home for this month's Lunar New Year holiday.

- AP