Beijing-Guangzhou railway reopened

The rail link between Beijing and Guangzhou, which was disrupted again by floods resulting from tropical storm Bilis on Tuesday, has now been reopened.

A section of the track between Baishidu and Pingshibei in South China's Guangdong Province subsided at around 11 pm on Tuesday.

Guangzhou Railway Group Corporation undertook the repairs, completing them at 8 pm yesterday.

"In the next few days, services will return to normal," Zhang Dazhi, a news officer with the corporation, told China Daily.

The storm forced the railway to be shut on Saturday and it resumed passenger services on Tuesday afternoon.

Many trains to and from Guangzhou were cancelled due to fears over passenger safety during the past week.

Guangzhou-based Nanfang Metropolis News reported that at least 23 trains stopped service and 19 others were redirected on Wednesday.

Zhang said on average at least 100 trains use the line each day, carrying about 200,000 passengers.

Meanwhile the death toll from tropical storm Bilis has climbed to 216 with 149 missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday.

Interaction between Bilis and other weather systems has led to heavy rainfall in some places in the south, Duan Yihong, vice-director of the National Meteorological Centre under the State Meteorological Administration, told People's Daily.

Since its landfall in Fujian on July 14, the tropical storm has been slowed by a subtropical anticyclone to the north and east, Duan said, while monsoons to the south have fed large quantities of water vapour into the system.

As a result, the storm has brought heavy rain to southern provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi and Hunan as well most parts of Guangdong and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from July 14-18, he added.

Meteorological departments successfully predicted the route, time span and degree of the tropical storm, Duan claimed.

But it is impossible to forecast the exact amount of precipitation, he noted.

Though the tropical storm has faded, the nation as a whole has entered the "crucial period" in its annual campaign against flood and drought, warned the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarter in an emergency notice to local branches on Wednesday.

Maximum attention and precaution should be taken to the safety of major rivers in case of flooding, it said.

Source: China Daily