AP — The extreme winter weather that has gripped Europe in the past days has caused more than a dozen deaths, left villages cut off, caused power and water outages, frozen rivers and lakes, grounded flights and led to road accidents.
Serbia’s authorities on Sunday banned river traffic on its stretch of the Danube – one of Europe’s main rivers – because of ice and strong wind.
Two men died of cold in Poland on Saturday, bringing the nation’s death toll from winter weather to 55 since Nov. 1, authorities said Sunday. Temperatures dropped to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) in the mountains of southern Poland.
In Italy, eight deaths were blamed on the cold, including a man who died in the basement of an unused building in Milan, and another one on a street flanking Florence’s Arno River. Francis asked God to “warm our hearts so we’ll help” the homeless.
German federal police said Sunday they picked up 19 migrants – including five children – at a highway stop in Bavaria who were suffering from hypothermia after their driver disappeared and left them on the back of an unheated a truck for hours in the freezing cold.
Numerous villages in northern Bulgaria were left without electricity and water. Power outages were also reported throughout the region. Police said a passenger train was derailed Sunday after it hit a snowdrift in the central part of the country.
Snow fell on Istanbul, Turkey, for the third straight day, and Turkish Airlines grounded hundreds of flights in and out of the city’s two airports.
Montenegro’s port of Bar in southern Adriatic closed down on Saturday, while sea traffic was suspended for days in neighboring Croatia.
A dozen major roads remained closed in Romania due to heavy snow and some ferry services between Romania and Bulgaria across the Danube were canceled. Authorities said schools would be closed Monday and Tuesday in many areas, including in the capital, Bucharest.
Four Portuguese nationals were killed when a bus skidded on an icy road in eastern France early Sunday. The road is notorious for fatal accidents.
Black ice across northern and western Germany has caused countless accidents and injuries – firefighters in the city of Hamburg said Sunday they were called to weather-related accidents 415 times during the weekend. Near Hannover, one person died in a car accident when his car skidded against a tree on an icy road, German news agency dpa reported. City authorities shut down the public transportation system and across the country, people were asked to wait out the severe weather conditions at home.
For hundreds of Muscovites, however, the fact that the temperature had plunged to minus-27 Celsius (minus 17 Fahrenheit) was no reason to avoid going for a group bicycle ride. About 500 cyclists, many equipped with fur hats and other nonstandard gear, held a ride of about eight kilometers (five miles) along the Moscow River on Sunday as the capital shivered through a fierce cold snap.
