Cars edge along the
Gonghexin Road Overpass as a rare heavy fog blanketed Shanghai
yesterday. On Thursday night, when the fog began spreading again,
it cut visibility to less than 400 meters in downtown.
Armed policemen help a man
and his bicycle onto a truck yesterday. With the city's ferries
suspended because of fog, soldiers were out helping commuters
through the tunnels.
Traffic on water, land and in the air was seriously disrupted by
fog and weather yesterday - and forecasters say an approaching cold
front could even bring snow to?Shanghai this weekend.
Labeled by local meteorologists as a "disaster," fog settled on
the city again on Thursday night and the Shanghai Meteorological
Bureau issued an orange fog alert at 10:15pm which remained in
place until 2:50pm yesterday afternoon.
A strong cold front is expected to hit the city early this
morning bringing low temperatures, rain, and possibly snow. The
temperature will drop eight to 10 degrees Celsius within two days
to a low on Monday or Tuesday morning of zero to two degrees. It
will be one degree below zero in the suburbs, the weather bureau
said.
Visibility in the city was reduced to less than 400 meters when
the fog started to spread on Thursday night. In the worst-hit
suburban areas it was less than 100 meters, Shen Lifeng, a senior
engineer from the weather bureau, said yesterday.
The lingering fog has forced the bureau to issue six warnings,
the first time in a decade.
The city's airports have suffered continuous interruptions to
their schedules.
A total of 340 scheduled flights could neither land nor take off
and around 60 were cancelled at Pudong International Airport
yesterday.
Not just passenger flights but freight and mail have also been
affected.
"Many shipments have been delayed by the disruptions and that
affects customs documents as well. I have to rearrange shipments
for the weekend. I am calling the shippers again and again to
confirm the arrival of shipments as well as calling the airlines to
change bookings," said Summer Zhao, a customer service agent for a
foreign air logistics company in town, one of thousands kept
extremely busy by the side effects of the fog.
Two major goods delivery service providers, FedEx and UPS, said
they could not be sure about times for airmails as long as the fog
stayed around.
"Many airmail parcels and letters will arrive later than
scheduled by at least one day," a client service representative of
FedEx said.
The city's children's hospitals said more patients suffering
respiratory diseases have been seeking help.
Officials from the Shanghai Children's Medical Center said the
demand for its outpatient and emergency services increased by 20
percent and the center treated 3,000 patients a day.
"Many of the patients have respiratory diseases. Because
children go to school early in the morning when the fog is thick,
it is likely to result in asthma, allergy syndromes and colds,"
said Dr Yue Mengyuan, director of the hospital's out-patient
department.
Yesterday's heavy fog was a concern for students from Chongming
Island who were heading downtown for the national college entrance
exam's painting test today - a test which could affect their
college admissions.
By 11am yesterday, about two-thirds of the examinees had left
the island and had reached the exam hall.
Education officials said that they would set a different exam
for those students who couldn't reach the exam hall and the
students did not have to panic about leaving the island.
(Shanghai Daily January 12, 2008)
