The winter weather misery stopping millions of Chinese migrant workers travelling home to celebrate their New Year with relatives only worsened Saturday with more snow forecast, according to dpa. Shanghai saw a further 15 centimetres of snow fall overnight, closing the city's main port, while two more airports were shut down in neighbouring Zhejiang province, Xinhua news agency said. For days the country's authorities have been trying to get most of an estimated 5.8 million stranded rail travellers home by the February 7 New Year festivities in the worst winter for 50 years. Forecasters warned that the grim weather would continue until at least February 8 or 9, leaving highways and railways iced up beyond any capacity to get the millions moving again in the south and east. The snow has caused direct economic losses of at least 53.9 billion yuan (7.5 billion dollars), Zhou Min, a spokesman for the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters Friday. The bad weather has killed at least 60 people and forced some 1.8 million people to relocate, destroying 223,000 houses and damaging 862,000, Zhou said. The death toll given by Zhou was not believed to include dozens more who have died in traffic accidents related to the weather. Some 5.8 million rail travellers have been reported stranded since Thursday at the latest after more than 10,000 passenger and freight services were delayed or cancelled, the railway ministry said. About 30,000 air passengers were stranded after 9,000 flights were cancelled or delayed this week, other officials said. Power cuts and collapsed transmission lines also forced the suspension of some rail services, partly because an earlier coal shortage was compounded by difficulties in transporting coal to and from snow-bound areas. The shortage forced China's national electricity grid to suspend about 7 per cent of its capacity, Liu Zhenya, the general manager of the grid, said earlier this week. The shortages affected more than 30 million people nationwide, state media said.
