13 More Deaths Reported As Icy Weather Still Grips Europe
Poland's interior ministry said Thursday that six more people had died in the country, taking Poland's death toll from hypothermia to 82 since November, 23 of them in recent days.
Five people, including three who were homeless, died in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, where temperatures plummeted to minus 19 degrees Celsius, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations.
In Germany, police said Thursday that the cold weather had claimed another two victims since Monday, both in the west of the country where temperatures plunged to minus 16 Celsius.
Heavy snow on the northern shores of the Mediterranean also left the French port of Marseilles paralyzed, with its airport remaining closed well into the day and 10,000 homes going without electricity overnight, officials said.
Road and rail transport suffered massive disruptions, and schools, nurseries and universities were also closed.
French weather services said between 20 and 40 centimeters of snow fell on the Bouches-du-Rhone, closing six major motorways.
Along France's southern coast towards Spain, the airport at Toulouse was also closed until midday, and motorways refused to accept heavy vehicles, police said.
The German weather office said Thursday this winter ranked among the coldest in a century. In some areas, temperatures of less than minus 20 Celsius were recorded overnight.
In the east German city of Schwerin, police hauled a drunken man, who had decided to take his car for a spin on a local lake, from the freezing water after the ice gave way beneath him.
Elsewhere, the Netherlands hosted for the first time in 12 years a skating championship on natural ice on the frozen lakes of a nature reserve northeast of Amsterdam.
But not everyone across Europe was enjoying the icy temperatures as Russian gas cuts, introduced Tuesday following a payment dispute with Ukraine, began to bite.
In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, women huddled around heaters, hospitals delayed operations and animals shivered alongside oil burners in zoos.
Both Bulgaria and Serbia's governments began either partly or fully switching their gas-fired central heating plants to crude oil in response to Moscow's decision to halt gas deliveries via Ukraine.
As Sofia began rationing gas supplies to industries, 75 schools across the country closed until Friday for lack of adequate heating.
The changeover provided little comfort for residents of Serbia's northern Vojvodina province, heavily dependent on Russian gas, where many were left without regular heating and some factories stopped production.
About 72,000 households in the snow-blanketed Bosnian capital Sarajevo also remained without heating for a third day due to a total halt in Moscow's gas supplies.
Thursday, the Czech presidency of the European Union said the E.U. is ill-prepared for the gas crisis, and needs better contingency planning and infrastructure.
It added that two-thirds of the 27 E.U. member states had been hit by the Russia-Ukraine energy dispute.
The Czech presidency of the E.U. said late Thursday that gas deliveries may resume, after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the E.U. presidency agreed on conditions for deploying monitors in Ukraine.
-Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-5500
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/access/al?rnd=4UlX2dQXxJ0qonPM5nmxhA%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
Publié le 08 janvier 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones
Partager sur:
