Orange alert as blizzards hit city

Beijing Meteorological Bureau downgraded its blizzard storm warning Sunday, after the capital was lashed by winds of up to 38 kilometers per hour, and rain, sleet and snowwhich lasted for over 40 hours in some outlying areas of the capital.

Beijing issued an orange alert, the second highest weather warning on the four-tier color coded system Sunday morning, but this was reduced to blue, the lowest level, at 11.50 am Sunday morning, and lifted entirely at 4.45 pm.

By 10 am Sunday, the capital saw an average daily precipitation of over 58 mm, a post-1951 record for the city during the November to March winter season, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Beijing Municipal Security Bureau said Saturday via microblog that a traffic plan had been put into action to ensure city streets remained unclogged, and 7,000 traffic officers were deployed.　

However, a four-kilometer stretch of the Beijing-Tibet highway in Yanqing county, near the Badaling section of the Great Wall, which also saw some of the heaviest snowfalls, was blocked, according to chinanews.cn. Over 1,000 vehicles were trapped, but the drivers and passengers were taken to safety in Yanqing county town, said the report.

The Beijing Armed Force dispatched 300 soldiers Sunday morning to help shift the snow and rescue the victims. Xinhua reported.

There were 18 flights canceled at Beijing Capital International Airport Sunday, according to chinanews.cn, and nine trains from Beijing West Railway Station to Yanqing Railway Station were canceled due to the effects of the blizzard, according to a microblog post from Beijing West Railway Station Sunday evening.　

Zhao Jianxin, a firefighter in Shijingshan district, said the city's fire squads have been on overtime over the weekend to handle the additional emergency calls.

"We've had 214 calls since noon Saturday from people asking for help with drainage, traffic problems or accidents such as house collapses," he said. Currently there have been no serious injuries due to the snow in Beijing.

Other city officials told the Global Times that they have been out on the streets looking for homeless people.　

The director of the Aid Station of Chaoyang district, surnamed Zhang, said they started outreach work early Saturday, looking in places such as underpasses where homeless people are known to congregate.　

"We informed the around 40 branch stations in the district on Friday, when we first knew that there would be a heavy snowfall in Beijing," Zhang said.

The rescue center would give out items such as coats, quilts, ginger sugar water and instant noodles, said Zhang, who admitted that most homeless people do not wish to be taken to an official shelter.

They had brought four homeless people to the shelter on Saturday, and helped out many more with food and clothing, said Zhang.

"Some just have prejudice against the shelter, because they think they might be detained or forced to return to their hometowns," he said.

While the city had announced last week that central heating systems were to be switched on by midnight Saturday, well ahead of the usual November 15 turn-on, many residents in all districts of the capital complained online that their homes had no heating.

Over 96 percent of homes had heat by 10 am Sunday, Xinhua reported.　

Despite this, residents who were heat-less complained they could not get through to the emergency hotline numbers released by the Beijing Heating Operation Office.

Beijing government published a list of hotline numbers for each district for heating system repairs Sunday morning on its official microblog.

The city is expected to see a respite from the early wintry weather, as Monday is forecast to be cloudy, clearing later, according to the weather bureau's microblog, with low temperatures at night of 0 C, and daytime highs of 10 C.