Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Millions of Chinese workers battled for a precious train ticket home Sunday as authorities flew in emergency food and medical supplies to areas stranded by the worst weather in 50 years.

China’s top leaders warned that the country faced a grim relief task as supplies were airlifted to the snowbound southwestern province of Guizhou and neighbouring Hunan where many people have been without power for more than a week, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The warning came after President Hu Jintao chaired a meeting Sunday of top Communist Party leaders to examine the relief effort.

“We have to be clear minded that certain regions in the south will continue to undergo icy weather caused by rain and snow and severe disasters will continue,” they said in a statement afterwards, according to Xinhua.

“Relief work will remain very grim, posing a tough task on us,” they said, adding that getting stranded people home and ensuring transport and power supplies were the top priorities.

State television showed workers handing out food to travellers along snowed-in highways and at trains stations where millions have been stranded for days with no way to get home ahead of Lunar New Year, China’s most important holiday.

The savage winter snows and freezing temperatures that have brought much of the nation to a standstill have transformed transport hubs into seething masses of frustrated humanity.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, 2,000 riot and army police fought to hold back crowds of hundreds of thousands of mainly migrant workers surging forward at the merest hint of an opening to a train platform.

For many, Lunar New Year — which falls on February 7 this year — is the only chance to escape to their families from their toil in the factories of southern China.

Premier Wen Jiabao urged people to be brave amid the worst winter in 50 years, as they waited exhausted and desperate amid growing piles of rubbish and human waste.

Li Kuochun, a 28-year-old stuck among the massive crowds trying to leave Guangzhou Railway Station, said people were pushing out of sheer frustration.

“I’m quite worried there will be a stampede,” said Li, who was hoping to get home to Hunan province.

“I just try to walk slowly but people keep pushing. You’re squeezed between people and can hardly move or breathe.

“But I think it’s worth the danger and risking my safety to go home and see my family. They are all back there and I really miss them.”

One woman was killed in a stampede at Guangzhou. Police were unable to control a crowd surging to board a train and in the chaos she fell and was trampled to death, Xinhua said.

The blizzards and icy temperatures that have lasted nearly three weeks now have stranded millions of people at airports, railway stations and bus depots in China’s south, central and eastern regions.

The weather has destroyed crops, hit industrial production, disrupted coal and food supplies and led to power blackouts, for a bill estimated at around 7.5 billion dollars, according to official figures.

At least 105 million out of the country’s 1.3 billion population have been affected and more than 60 have been killed, the government says.

One official in Hunan reportedly collapsed and died of exhaustion after not sleeping for days, a report said.

China’s leadership has been working overtime as it tries to project concern for the millions of stranded passengers, and Wen urged courage in the face of the national disaster.

“We have the faith, courage and ability to overcome” the disaster, he said in a radio address from a train in Hunan province, where a usually temperate climate has caught the region unprepared.

The crisis has prompted China to dispatch more than one million troops and 65,500 medical workers to deliver relief. So far, the medics have treated more than 200,000 ill and injured people, the health ministry said.

Army tanks dispatched to clear roads in eastern Anhui province only arrived last Saturday after the fierce weather delayed them for days.

Along the Zhuhai to Beijing expressway, sections of the key north-south artery were reopened Sunday as soldiers and police in armoured vehicles worked to clear the icy road, Xinhua reported.

Many drivers have been stranded for more than a week.

(AP)