Tanks roll on the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway to deice the snow- and ice-covered road surface as soldiers shovel snow in Chenzhou, Central China's Hunan Province, February 3, 2008. [Xinhua]
Posted on 02/03/2008 7:12:28 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Tanks sent to deice storm-affected highways
(Xinhua) Updated: 2008-02-03 19:30
CHAOHU, Anhui -- The Chinese army has sent out tanks to clean the icy expressways in eastern Anhui Province.
Tanks roll on the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway to deice the snow- and ice-covered road surface as soldiers shovel snow in Chenzhou, Central China's Hunan Province, February 3, 2008. [Xinhua] |
Two tanks have finished their work Sunday, deicing 110-km surface of two expressways in the province, said military sources here Sunday.
Traffic on the Hefei-Anqing and Hefei-Wuhu expressways had suffered heavy snow in the past week with thousands of vehicles stranded.
The tanks were sent there Thursday evening, but it took them more than 30 hours to cover the distance that usually costs just two and half hours in normal weather, due to the dense traffic jam on the way.
They started deicing the road on early Saturday morning, the source said.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China had deployed 306,000 soldiers to combat the worst winter storm in five decades.
About 1.07 million militia and army reservists were also participating in the relief efforts.
Other military vehicles such as field kitchen trucks and armored cars are playing an important role in de-icing and rescue missions. More than 100 aircraft and helicopters remained on standby, air force sources said.
Armored cars are busy deicing the road surface along the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway, a south-north trunk road that have been repeatedly affected by the winter storm.
On Saturday, the air force had sent three transporters to help ship relief material from southern Guangdong Province to neighboring most-affected Hunan Province.
Meanwhile, two transporters flew to the southwestern province of Guizhou, carrying 5.5 tons of relief material and equipment including food, medicine and quilts.
By 1:33 p.m. on Saturday, the first of six helicopters loaded with relief goods, deployed by the Chengdu Military Area in southwest China, flew to Yibin, Sichuan Province. The copters were to airdrop 5,500 quilts over snow-hit areas in Dazhou and Yibin's Changning County, which on top of the snow was hit by a medium-intensity earthquake early on Friday.
Those are the cheap ones. There are more expensive, better wearing Hankook (means “Korea” as in South Korea) tire models, though. IIRC, the ROK holds its companies to a certain level of quality control before allowing exports (see the name). Hankook’s getting pretty heavily into racing, too (even drift racing now).
Like I said in another comment, though, I use Goodyears when driving more. Well...hopefully, the MT/Rs are American. Quite a few tires sold by Goodyear (at least under other names) aren’t and come from some of those terrible places.
They don’t. You haven’t lived until you’ve been in a tank skidding sideways on ice. It stops when it wants to, and as you can imagine, 68 tons (an American M1) can build some momentum...
I think there are some vets on this list who will concur with your memory.
Regards,
TS
Chinese response to their “50-year winter storm” was better than New Orleans response to their “50-year tropical storm.”
I have a Chinese lead truck!
I saw a really funny video clip a few months ago where Finnish (pretty sure) tank crews were power-sliding their Leo 2A5’s around a frozen track at their motor pool.
Those wacky kids!
Regards,
Read a rather depressing account of what the Chinese factory migrant workers lifes are really like. These migrants were the ones who were stuck in the train stations and were unable to get home for their 1 holiday. Slave labor with one holiday a year, is a near accurate approximation. Very few employers follow the labor laws. No guarantee you will even be paid for services rendered.
You made some great insights on this thread. Thanks.
Treadheads forever!
TS
Wish I’d kept it, but I got it at work, and the network folks there are rather stringent.
Maybe it’s on You Tube?
I miss tanks...nowadays I comand a computer.
Regards,
That Chinese ice storm doesn’t look much worse than a bad North Texas icestorm. North Texas is at the same latitude as Central China (but at least Texas is not south of Siberia).
Answer: They have Gore ride on lead tank blowing hot air about Global Warming BS on road.
You fire a penetrator round through the line of cars. The debris flies off the road and the heat from the feul fires...
Global warming alert from al gore! the snow and ice are figments of the imagination.
Anhui is quite diverse topographically. The north of the province is part of the North China Plain while the north-central areas are part of the Huai He River watershed. Both of these regions are very flat and densely populated. The land becomes more uneven further south, with the Dabie Mountains occupying much of southwestern Anhui and a series of hills and ranges cutting through southeastern Anhui. The Yangtze River finds its way through south Anhui in between these two mountainous regions. The highest peak in Anhui is Lotus Peak, part of the Huangshan Mountains in southeastern Anhui. It has an altitude of 1873 m.
Major rivers include the Huai He in the north and the Yangtze in the south. The largest lake is Lake Chaohu in the center of the province, with an area of about 800 km. The southeastern part of the province near the Yangtze River has many lakes as well.
As with topography, the province differs in climate from north to south. The north is more temperate and has more clearcut seasons. January temperatures average at around -1 to 2°C north of the Huai He, and 0 to 3°C south of the Huai He; in July temperatures average 27°C or above.
LOL! Memories of Hohenfels, 1985..........
MAP: CHINA: Cold Wave - Jan 2008
New report out of India.
Cold waves freezes north India
ISLAMABAD, Feb 3 (APP): Freezing cold hit Indian Punjab, Haryan and nothern states continue on Sunday with mercury to sub zero at many places.
I don’t see any dozer blades on those tanks just a lot of people with shovels behind them.
The Hankooks on my wife’s (dreaded) SUV work very well on mudddy and icey Ozarks roads and construction sites where she goes to do her work. She’s even scared a few 4-wheelers by going up hills they were afraid to go down.
Cold Chinese Grow Angry Over Lack of Preparation
Liu Xinfang, a spokesman for the national grid, said that as of Saturday 2,000 transmission towers and about 24,000 miles of transmission cables were still down in central and eastern China. “The wires have been frozen into huge ice sticks,” he said. “Some towers are bearing four times their weight.”
Others said the high number of collapsed transmission towers was a result of the fact that in southern China they are spaced far apart, largely as an economy measure.
One of the worst-hit areas for power has been Chenzhou, a city of four million in Hunan Province, where many have lacked water, electricity, heating or commercial food supplies for 10 days.
“Our power grid system was seriously damaged, in fact torn to pieces, and it is very hard to repair,” said Li Yufang, chief of the city’s emergency operations center. “When one part of the grid is fixed, another suddenly collapses, so power can only be transmitted intermittently.”
In southeastern Guizhou, another hard-hit area, officials said there had been extensive loss of winter crops, like wheat. Power has been out there for weeks.
That kind of excuse didn't cut it for FEMA according to our medias standrads this should have been cleared up within a couple of hours without any help from the effected citizens.
Most of China to get clear weather for coming holiday
BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- During the upcoming Lunar New Year China will get a much-needed respite from the arctic weather that has blasted much of the country for the past three weeks, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said Monday.
On Monday and Tuesday, light snow and sleet would fall on some parts of the country's northwest and in the areas south to the Yangtze River. Icy rain is forecast for some mountainous areas of Guizhou.
Yu said since Jan. 10, snow, sleet and low temperatures have swept China's southern regions, a rarity for the area. The worst winter weather in five decades has been more extreme in the central provinces of Hubei and Hunan. A lingering blizzard, which has lasted more than two weeks, was the longest in the past 100 years. In Hunan, ice sticking to electricity transmission cables was between 30 and 60 millimeters thick.
According to Yu, Anhui Province had experienced continuous snow for 24 days, the longest in more than 50 years, while Zhejiang Province had its worst snowstorm in the past 84 years.
Henan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia also recorded their highest precipitation since 1951.
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