IT WILL not last long, the dust from yesterday's gritty dawn.Late last night, the first of 16 road and footpath sweepers rolled on to the streets of central Sydney. This morning, they will be joined by 100 manual sweepers.After assessing the mess yesterday afternoon, the City of Sydney put on eight extra cleaners to deal with the dust. They will be working all week. Across the city, car wash operators were calling in extra staff and pressure-cleaning businesses were bracing for extra demand.By midday, Michael Walton was already washing down the front of his terrace in Erskineville - splashing water down his front path, cleaning the folds of his wrought iron fence.''It's just annoying,'' he said. ''I washed down the house yesterday and it's worse now than when I started.''On the other side of the city, Simon Merlo, owner of Sydney Wide Pressure Cleaning, started the morning cancelling jobs. But the business he lost to yesterday's dust storm he expects to make back from it in the next week. Several times over.''Within the next couple of days it will all come through,'' he said. ''I can't help but think, as I drive around looking at red-shaded houses, that it's got to have an effect. It's not just a question of aesthetics, it's about health.''At Crystal Carwash in Chatswood, management were preparing to put on extra staff for a rush of work after the storm. Rahul Goal, who runs the business, expects to be washing as many as 500 cars a day. ''I'm thinking we will be doing weekend business on the week days.''The director-general of the Department of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, emailed principals yesterday advising them to cancel sporting events and keep children inside. An athletic carnival for 1100 students was cancelled at Homebush.Air-conditioning filters were not severely affected. The dust was too coarse to choke them and one building manager told the Herald he had simply shaken his filters off and fitted them back in place. But owners of water tanks have been warned to have first flush diverters fitted to prevent the dust particles entering their tanks and damaging toilet and washing machine valves.''I haven't seen a dust storm like this for some time,'' the owner of Rainwater Tanks Direct, Darrell Young, said. ''There's going to be a lot of dust on a lot of roofs putting orange water into tanks.''