Train chaos puts crisis management in question(2)

SLOW RESPONSE AGGRAVATES PASSENGERS

Thousands of people packed in the station square on Saturday, in heavy rain, found trains canceled and long queues for refunds.

Passenger Wang was heading for Sichuan Province in southwest China and arrived at the station at 8:00 a.m.. but there was no information about her train at all.

Wang follows GRC at Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, but she got nothing useful in the five hours that followed.

"I was at a total loss until noon, when the big screen said the trains were suspended," Wang said. "If they'd put the notice up earlier, I wouldn't have waited so long in the rain. And they didn't make it clear which trains were canceled."

Confused passengers like Wang could do nothing but wait anxiously at the station.

Situation worsened on Saturday afternoon. All check-in entrances were closed and guarded, but few railway staff were available for inquiries.

Passenger Huang Liyan was furious about the lack of information. "We cannot ask anybody about the trains. There is only the big screen and some unclear directions from the loudspeakers. I wonder why the railway staff aren't here to let us know what has happened."

Passengers are required to return their tickets within 48 hours to have a full refund, but the queues were hopelessly long.

As information spread later through social media and the Internet, the crowd began to thin in the evening.

The railway company has decided to extend the time for refunds to five days. All check-in counters at Guangzhou Railway Station were turned into refund counters on Sunday. Passengers were allowed to return tickets for a full refund at any station in the Province.

"We've opened 68 refund counters." said Wang Wei, deputy director of Guangzhou Railway Station. "Three million yuan (490,000 U.S. dollars) cash were sent here last night. But we ran out of the cash only in a few hours. We're borrowing money from nearby stations."