China steels for worse weather

A man carries water provided by the local government at a residential area in Wuhan

SHAOGUAN, China, Saturday (Reuters) - Work crews battled on Saturday to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for over a week by the fiercest snow storms in 50 years as the government warned that worse was to come.

Mobilising the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to help keep traffic moving and ensure power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Repair teams were working flat out to restore power to the southern province of Hunan, one of the worst-hit areas. Chenzhou, a city of 4 million, has been without electricity for eight days and petrol and food supplies are running low.

“We will strive to partially restore electricity supply in Chenzhou on Saturday,” Xinhua quoted Yin Jijun, an official with China's national grid, as saying.

Fresh falls of snow started to blanket central, south and east China on Friday, prompting the government to warn that the weather crisis had yet to peak.