I don’t know how you help so many people in this kind of chaos, but watching the video on CNN is frightening. If you’ve ever been frustrated by travel plan delays, you may be able to empathize with what the Chinese are going through. But given the size of the country, the scale seems so much bigger.
More than 67 million people have been affected by the weather and economic losses are expected to reach as much as $3 billion, Chinese officials say.
Blizzards have snapped power lines and destroyed houses and farmland, prompting fears of food and energy shortages. Twenty-four people have died and some 827,000 people have been evacuated in 14 different provinces, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Monday.
In the past week, the snowstorms have hit the provinces in central, eastern and southern China — places that are used to mild winters, not extreme wintry blasts.
“We’ve never seen such a cold weather lasting for such long a time,” said Tang Shan, a man in his 70s in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. “The last time we had one here was over 50 years ago, and not this bad.”
I confess. I’m speechless, looking at the images like these at the Washington Post website.
Here’s a first-person impression from a Shanghai blogger and here’s another one.