April 20, 2006

Sandstorm stops Beijing construction

BEIJING

A sandstorm that swept into Beijing put a stop to all work on construction sites. The storm left skies hazy and the city blanketed under a film of ochre-coloured dust — an annual rite of spring in the country’s north.

It’s “as if the desert has crawled to Beijing overnight,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted resident Zhang Rui as saying after the storm, which hit the China-Inner Mongolia border over the weekend, and moved southeast into the capital.

All over the city, residents and workers were dusting and hosing down cars, buildings and monuments.

The weather was calm but meteorologists predicted a slight drizzle.

City workers were sent to wash down roads, and construction sites were told to stop work in an effort to lessen the impact of the storm, Xinhua said.

Each spring, sandstorms fed by the deserts of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia blow toward Beijing and the eastern seaboard.

Sometimes,the dust blows out across the Pacific, clouding the skies of South Korea and occasionally drifting as far as the North American West Coast.

Monday’s storm was the eighth — and the worst — to hit Beijing this year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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