Residents walk in snow in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, on March 4, 2007. The strongest snowstorm in 56 years hit Liaoning, left at least one person dead and seven injured and caused air and highway traffic disturbed. (Xinhua Photo)    Photo Gallery>>>

    SHENYANG, March 5 (Xinhua) -- The heaviest March snowstorm to hit northeast China in 56 years disrupted air and road traffic and cut off power and water supplies in many parts of the coastal city of Dalian on Sunday.

    Gusts of up to 110 kilometers per hour cut power cables, shutting down 11 of the city's 25 220-kv power supply stations at 10:36 p.m.

    The power failure hit suburban Lushunkou and Jinzhou districts, Wafangdian city and parts of the eastern and western urban areas, and subsequently cut the water supply and central heating in some urban areas.

    Dalian Thermoelectricity Group, the city's largest central heating supplier, was forced to cut heating for 40 percent of its users at midnight, leaving thousands of urban families shivering as the mercury dropped to minus seven degrees Celsius.

    Dalian power company carried out emergency repairs through the night and by Monday morning it had reconnected the city power grid and restored more than half of the transformer stations, said Zhao Weijun, a senior engineer from the company.

    But the company is yet to restore the power supply in Wafangdian city and four islands in Changhai county, where facilities were badly disrupted by the blizzard, he said.

    The Dalian weather bureau reported 56 millimeters of rain and snow from the blizzard that started on Saturday night and lasted until the small hours of Monday.

    Rain and snow hit most parts of northeast China. There were 36 millimeters in Liaoning's provincial capital Shenyang and 68 mm in Dandong, according to the Shenyang Meteorological Observatory.

    The snow stood two meters high in some areas.

    Power transmission had resumed Monday afternoon in most of the damaged parts of the northeast China grid, according to power company sources.

    Meanwhile, the Dalian and Dandong airports in Liaoning, and the airport in Changchun, capital of Jilin Province, reopened on Monday afternoon.

    But Taoxian International Airport in Shenyang, which was closed at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, will not reopen until 8 p.m. Monday. At least 1,000 passengers were stranded and 144 flights canceled at the airport.

    The snow, which also hit many others parts of north China such as Beijing and Tianjin, has killed at least five people.

    Three people were confirmed dead and seven injured when two marketplaces, one in Shenyang and the other in Jinzhou, collapsed under the weight of the snow on Sunday, the Liaoning provincial government said.

    Two people died after a workshop in a Tianjin bicycle parts production factory collapsed under the snow. The municipality also reported collapses of workshops, storehouses and marketplaces in more than ten places.

    More than 1,100 ramshackle homes collapsed in the high wind on Sunday in Liaoning Province and another 1,300 were damaged, though no casualties have been reported, said a spokesman with the provincial civil affairs department, adding that the city government had arranged temporary lodging for these people.

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