Orange alert as blizzards hit city (3)

"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.