Sounds like... 
a lot of fun, eh?
Posted on 02/02/2008 5:48:19 PM PST by justa-hairyape
BEIJING, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- As of midnight Friday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China had deployed 306,000 soldiers to combat the effects of the snow in the southern parts of the country, a military source said.
About 1.07 million militia and army reservists were participating in the weather relief effort, the PLA's emergency response group told Xinhua.
The PLA currently has 2.3 million troops.
Irregular tactics, including shooting power lines with submachine guns to shatter the ice, and resorting to tanks to crush ice on the road, were used frequently by soldiers.
In the southern city of Guangzhou, about 1,500 soldiers helped maintain order at the train station.
Soldiers of the Hubei Provincial Military Area in central China helped local police to restore a 28-km section of the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway, the country's key north-south trunk road, which had been closed by dangerous icing. Those efforts helped more than 6,000 vehicles and 12,000 stranded riders continue their journeys.
The snow havoc has hit 19 provincial regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp, toppled 223,000 houses and damaged another 862,000, said the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The ministry said that nearly 7.8 million people had been affected ....
Experts said that the cold, snowy spell had displaced the 1998 Yangtze River flood as the largest natural disaster in decades. The 1998 flood affected 2.3 million people.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.xinhuanet.com ...
that should read machine gun fire.
How about a few mexicans to help out?
They cannot feed em.
Wonder how much of this will drain into the Three Gorges Dam and what the impact will be. That thing is already a time bomb waiting to happen.
The Chinese will be dealing with high flood waters come the thaw and so will the rest of the world. Snow levels are higher then normal in many areas. The Central valley of California will be flooding when the Sierras melt.
Curiously, they claim that they are able to control the weather to the extent that they will prevent rain from falling on the Olympics next summer.
Were that so, I would think it would be no big deal to stop this current “intemperate weather”.
Back here in the "100 Year Ice Storm" in January of 1998, in New England - we had a bad time of it.
Emergency crews came from across the country to help get us back up and running.
I was without power for 19 days. No furnace, no lights, no refrigeration, NO FLUSH! I was more fortunate than most. I have my wood stove for heat and cooking - and taking a bath in front of in a big galvanized tub. (Quite delightful, actually).
I have my kerosene lamps for light and they also produce a good amount of heat.
I had to transport water from the fire house.
As for food, I always keep certain basics on hand like: the makings for chowder and soups...like canned clams, oysters, corn, tomatoes. I keep a couple jars of chicken and beef paste for making stock - each small jar will make up to 32 qts of stock. I have cocoa powder, sugar, canned milk, coffee, tea - on and on.
Our grocery stores are only stocked with one days supply for the area. In a panic, it will be stripped of staples in a couple hours.
I was raised in the 30's-40's in the north woods with my grandparents. During the ice storm, I thought:"Now if this had happened up on the farm, how would it have affected us?"
hmmm - it really would have had little affect - other than a lot of fire wood would have already been cut, thanks to Mother Nature.
We didn't have electricity. We had a shed full of wood for the stoves. We had our lamps. We had our water pump on the kitchen sink...We had a cellar full of vegetables, barrels of apples, potatoes, pork, beef - shelfs of gleaming jars of vegetables and fruit.
We had fresh milk and butter in the barn, so to speak; eggs and chicken in the hen house.
We would not have been affected for some time - until we ran out of things like flour and sugar. But that could be a couple weeks - by which time, things would likely be under control.
Nowadays, who is prepared to go it 2-3 days!
China's emergency covers an area half the size of this country. What if we had a storm of that magnitude?
WE are far less able to take care of ourselves today that people were 60 years ago.
We need to think about that.
We have put all our eggs in one basket...and if that gets overturned???
Shooting at power lines with machine guns … yes, that will solve the problem. What the ice couldn’t do the bullets will.
I find it odd too. Theoretically it could be a cover up for riot control, but that is going off the conspiratorial deep end.
Oregon hit hard by snowfall across state
Excerpts
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — There is snow everywhere in Klamath Falls but nary a shovel around....It sounded like a bad rumor this week, but more than 15 store managers in numerous department, grocery and hardware stores said it was true — they were out of snow shovels in Klamath Falls.
In Detroit, Ore. there is so much snow that Marion County officials sent jail inmates there Friday to dig out fire hydrants and storm drains, and to cut trails from houses to the highway so residents could make their way out.
The Oregonian reports the county's dump trucks had to help out because there was so much snow being shoveled out of the way, there was nowhere else to put it, said Robert Jeffers, a cook at Cedars Restaurant & Lounge off Oregon 22.
The snow has shut down interstates and state highways in Oregon and Washington, closed dozens of schools and stranded snowmobilers and back-country adventurers this week. Maybe worst of all, it has established conditions that could lead to significant flooding if the region gets a sudden warm spell and heavy rain.
Not much.
The hardest hit area is downstream in Southeast China.
We have had problems here too over the years due to blizzrds, etc. I have a woodstove, kerosene lamps, canned goods in the pantry, and a Coleman camp stove as a backup.
Have had to use the above a few time times over the last 30 years or so.
Sounds like... a lot of fun, eh?
I'm ready for spring - I think when I go to bed tonight, I'll set the alarm for mid-April
The tech (allegedly) lets them cause rain clouds to dump before they get over the area that they want to keep dry. Might work for a city, but not a larger area.
BTW, the PLA is only 2.3 million strong? Is that a typo? I always imagined it would be MUCH bigger given their base population of over a billion!
I think they have large militias and civil defense forces, but the reality is, China is not that big an economy and cannot support a much larger active duty force.
Maybe the Chi-Coms should drive more SUV’s.
See where Guangzhou is in the south then look up and see the Yangtze River...that's where the Three Gorges Dam is.
Thanks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.