S. China braces for Typhoon Jelawat
29/6/2006 17:22
Passenger and freight liners in south China's island province of Hainan
resumed service this morning, after a 24-hour suspension caused by the
tropical storm Jelawat.
The first ship with 160 passengers and 39 vehicles
was allowed to set sail from Haikou, provincial capital, to Hai'an in
neighboring Guangdong Province at 8 a.m. And more set off for Guangdong and
Guangxi around noon, when gale on the Qiongzhou channel abated to below eight
Beaufort scale.
Two passenger trains to Guangzhou via ferry ship, scheduled
at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. and cancelled on Wednesday, will resume service, said an
official with the Yuehai Railway Company.
The tropical storm Jelawat that
appeared in the South China Sea on Tuesday landed on Zhanjiang, Guangdong, at
7:40 a.m. Thursday and subsided to tropical depression, according to the Chinese
Central Meteorological Station.
However, the Office for Flood, Drought and
Typhoon Relief of Hainan advised fishermen to keep close watch to the weather
forecast. The office called 19,082 ships back to port on Wednesday to avoid the
storm.
Air traffic across the Qiongzhou Strait wasn't interrupted, said Li
Jianguo, spokesman with the Meilan International Airport in Haikou, where 126
flights with 13,000 passengers were due to take off or land Wednesday.
Seven
flights with over 1,000 passengers, whose landing was hindered by strong wind in
Haikou Wednesday and were diverted to Sanya, returned to the Meilan
International Airport.
Xinhua
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