Thread: Ice breakers called in as icy conditions across Europe worsen; deathtoll reaches 400

Ice breakers called in as icy conditions across Europe worsen and deathtoll reaches 400

Posted on February 7, 2012
by The Extinction Protocol

February 7, 2012 – EUROPE — Authorities used explosives, icebreakers and tractors Tuesday in the battle to overcome Europe’s big freeze, as dozens more died of hypothermia and tens of thousands remained cut off by snow. Around 400 people have now died from the cold weather in Europe since the cold snap began 11 days ago.

While there was some respite for people in Ukraine — where more than 130 deaths have been recorded — the mercury plunged overnight to minus 39.4 degrees Celsius in the Kvilda region of the Czech Republic. More bodies were found either on the streets, in their cars or in their homes in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary and across the Balkans.

Conditions worsened when snow- and rain-swollen rivers burst a Bulgarian dam and killed at least eight, while more homeless people perished on frigid city streets.

National radio reported two other people were killed when their car was swept off a bridge. “People are in panic,” regional mayor Mihail Liskov said on national radio. “Ninety percent of the village is under water.” Two larger dams in southern Bulgaria risked spilling over and residents were told to prepare to evacuate.

Heavy rains also triggered a landslide that derailed a train near the Turkish border. No injuries were reported. Meanwhile, temperatures in Poland plunged to as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius (minus 11 Fahrenheit), bringing another deadly night for the homeless.

As has been the case throughout the 10-day-old cold snap, transients have borne the brunt of the suffering, with frozen victims found in abandoned and unheated homes, fire escapes or makeshift shelters on Europe’s streets.

In a bid to save lives, Poland’s homeless shelters have dropped a ban on drunken individuals. Monika Golebiewska, a Warsaw police officer whose beat is a daily patrol bringing food and clothing to the homeless in the city’s hardscrabble Praga district, said she has been unrelentingly busy since the cold snap started. –Terra Earth – National Post



Ice breakers called in as icy conditions across Europe worsen and deathtoll reaches 400 | The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

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Ice age Europe: How the big freeze, with temperatures as low as MINUS 40, has turned Britain and the continent BLUE

• Hundreds of Eastern European villages cut off as temperatures plummet to -40C
• Melting snow causes dam wall to break and flood entire village in southern Bulgaria, killing four
• European crisis commissioner says 'the worst is yet to come'
  

By Lee Moran

Last updated at 11:24 AM on 9th February 2012

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Europe continues to be blanketed in snow as the cold snap which has so far killed hundreds across the continent shows no signs of stopping.
Hundreds of villages across Eastern Europe were today completely cut off as temperatures plummeted in some places to -40C.
Rescue teams struggled to evacuate southern Bulgarians where villages flooded after rain and melting snow broke damn walls.


All white: Europe continues to be blanketed in snow as the cold snap which has so far killed hundreds across the continent shows no signs of stopping


Frozen: Lampposts are covered in the ice of waves in the Croatian Adriatic coastal town of Senj


Clear up: Volunteers clear the snow from the ice on the route of the intended Dutch Elfstedentocht (Eleven City Races) skating marathon in Sneek, Netherlands, today





A man enjoys the ice the typically Dutch way, on a bicycle, while others skate and walk on Prinsengracht canal, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Residents were also warned that there was more snow to come - which would be followed by severe floods when the temperature finally starts to rise and the snow melts.
Meanwhile temperatures in Britain are due to plummet to as low as -13C, with the big freeze due to last well into the weekend.


More...

• Boy, 6, dumped in snow with no shoes by thieves who discovered him in the car they had just swiped
• Abandoned dog found whimpering in snowy Alps by rescue team after ten-day search in -10C temperatures
• Will Heathrow survive half an inch of snow? Minus 13C tonight and more snow this weekend as fears rise of chaos for the half-term getaway

Around 146 towns and villages in Romania were isolated with no road or train connections because of blizzards.

Up to 174 villages had no electricity, said Alin Maghiar, spokeman for Romania's emergency department.
Electricity was also cut off to 300 towns and villages in Bulgaria, roads were closed and several border checkpoints with Romania and Turkey were shut, the Interior Ministry said.

An 18-month-old Siberian tiger plays in the winter snow at Skopje zoo


Smothered: Italy has also been blanketed in snow, which has disrupted schools, transport and general day to day life





Ice babies: A squirrel devours a nut Lazienki park in Warsaw, Poland (left), as a swan sits on partly frozen water in Strasbourg harbour (right)



Play time: Children and adults stroll on a frozen lake in Hamburg, Germany, despite warnings not to do so from national officials




Melting snow caused a dam wall to break and flood an entire village in southern Bulgaria yesterday. Four people drowned and more than 50 were evacuated.
Four more people died when their cars were swept away by high waters.
Iliyan Todorov, from the village of Biser, told Trud newspaper: 'It was terrifying. We were warned that the tsunami was coming only five minutes before the wave came. We survived by a miracle.'
European Commissioner for Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva added that 'the worst is yet to come' after visiting the village.

A snow covered train tracks are seen in the town of Alexandria, northern Greece


Ice covers the seafront of the Adriatic coastal town of Senj, Croatia






A boy slides down a hill on a plastic sheet in Bucharest, Romania, while cars remain covered by snow in the village of Mercogliano in southern Italy





Snow patrol: A police car battles blizzards and limited visibility on the A2 motorway which connects Bucharest to Constanta





Stroll: A hiker walks in front of a frozen waterfall in Oberhaslach, eastern France (left), while another walker goes along the ice covered landscape of the Tamina gorge in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland



Hard hit: Ukraine has been the worst affected by the cold snap, with 135 confirmed dead so far



She told bTV: 'The next two weeks may be really hard. The warmer weather will cause melting of the snow and the situation will most probably worsen.'
Ukraine has been hardest hit, with 135 people confirmed dead so far and forecasters saying bitter temperatures, as low as -30C, would continue for at least another eight days.
The Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas have been forced to close due to strong winds, and Romania's main port of Constanta was also shut.
Authorities in Serbia said they were preparing to use explosives to break ice on the rivers Ibar and Danube.



Warming up: A Georgian man exercises near the frozen Tbilisi reservoir today as the snow shows no signs of letting up





Tough times: A woman waits for a bus in Kosovo's capital Pristina (left) as a snow truck battles against the elements near the village of Dardhishte (right)



Predrag Maric, head of the Interior Ministry's emergencies department, said: 'An ice cap half a metre deep has formed on the Ibar near Kraljevo and there is a real danger that it could cause the river to overflow into the city.'
He said 62miles of the Danube were freezing over and that it would also be mined.
Eleven people have died so far from the cold and snow in Serbia, with the latest victims a 62-year-old man found dead close to his home near Arilje, and a woman killed by falling ice in the capital Belgrade.
Serbian power provider TENT, which provides more than 60 per cent of the country's electricity, said it was managing to maintain supplies but was working at full capacity in 'extreme' conditions.

A sunken houseboat is seen on the frozen Zwanenburgwal canal in Amsterdam after its water pipes burst



Making use: People skate across frozen canals in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which have been closed to commercial shipping


People skate on the frozen Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam, Netherlands

To the south in Albania, the Kukes lake on the border with Kosovo - supplying a hydropower plant at Fierze - was frozen over for the first time in more than a decade, putting more pressure on already strained power supplies.
The cold weather has increased demand for gas in many European countries.
Italy took emergency measures yesterday to deal with what it called critical shortages of Russian gas.
Supplies to other members of the European Union mostly improved at the weekend but remained below normal.
Russia, which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas, reduced westward flows through pipelines across Ukraine last week citing greater domestic demand because of the extreme weather.
Race horses are exercised on the snowy gallops in Malton, North Yorkshire, England


Snow covers boats on a frozen section of the Sava river in Belgrade, Serbia

Mush! A competitor speeds through the snow with his Siberian huskies during a dog race in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany





Europe weather: Snow covers continent as temperatures plunge to MINUS 40C | Mail Online

THE UN IS 'SCAREMONGERING' OVER CLIMATE CHANGE, SAYS ENERGY BOSS

An energy expert has said that the United Nations are 'scaremongering' over climate change

By Nathan Rao


AN energy firm boss last night accused the United Nations of “scaremongering” over climate change.

Chemist Fritz Vahrenholt, of German company RWE, said global warming arguments are supported by “weak science”.

He claims reduced solar activity will end up causing the earth to cool down in years to come rather than get hotter.

“The climate catastrophe is not occurring,” he said.

“In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body.

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The climate catastrophe is not occurring

Chemist Fritz Vahrenholt, of German company RWE

GLOBAL WARMING IS OVER, SAYS EXPERT

“As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC.”

Vahrenholt said views laid out in his book The Cold Sun will “will make me enemies in all camps”.

He claims new studies have “seriously questioned” the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming.

“CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” he added.

“I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century.

“My concern is that if citizens discover that the people who warn of a climate disaster are only telling half the truth, they will no longer be prepared to pay higher electricity costs for wind and solar.

“I am indeed saying that climate change is manageable, because the cooling effects of the sun and the ocean currents give us enough time to prepare.”

His comments were welcomed by Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation.
He said: “It just goes to show that the criticism of climate science and climate policy is deepening.

“The realisation that the global warming trend is coming to a halt makes it even more compelling.

“This is a very important development.”

Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: The UN is 'scaremongering' over climate change, says energy boss

Europe continues to suffer through its coldest February in 26 years

Posted on February 10, 2012
by The Extinction Protocol



February 10, 2012 – ROMANIA – Europe’s record freezing temperatures have claimed hundreds of lives, snarled traffic and trapped tens of thousands of residents in remote villages across Serbia and Romania. It is the worst cold snap to happen in February in 26 years, Georg Mueller, a forecaster at Point Carbon told Reuters. “It was in 1986 when we had the last similarly severe cold weather (in February),” he said. “In this instance this big blocking of cold air . . . seemed to influence the way the winds behaved rather than the other way around,” he said. “We didn’t expect the cold block to become so persistent and then move westward.” In many European capitals, authorities have set up extra shelters for the homeless to help them survive the cold snap that has seen temperatures sink as low as minus 36 C. The majority of the cold-related deaths have been of the homeless. Meteorologists predict the frigid temperatures will last until the end of February. “We do have higher confidence in a change by mid-February, but not to milder weather,” Leon Brown, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Britain, told Reuters. “February will probably remain a cold month right to the end.” –The Star

Europe continues to suffer through its coldest February in 26 years | The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

Death-toll from European deep freeze hits 460 as Danube freezes over

Posted on February 10, 2012
by The Extinction Protocol



February 10, 2012 – GERMANY – Thick ice closed vast swathes of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe’s busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose to at least 460. As it has every day for nearly two weeks, the brutal cold claimed lives in several countries and killed dozens more in weather-related accidents. The 2,860-kilometre (1,780-mile) Danube, which flows through 10 countries and is vital for transport, power, irrigation, industry and fishing, was wholly or partially blocked from Austria to its mouth on the Black Sea. Navigation was impossible or restricted in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, as ice covered the river or formed dangerous floes in shipping lanes. An official from the Serbian economy ministry said the commercial repercussions “could be very bad,” while infrastructure ministry official Pavle Galico said shipping would not resume for 10 days. Bulgarian authorities, who have banned all navigation on the river, reported 224 vessels stuck in ports, and Ukrainian rescuers in Croatia reached three crew members on a ship trapped in the ice since Friday. Temperatures in Bulgaria dropped to a new record low Thursday of minus 28.6 degrees Celsius (minus 19.5 Fahrenheit) in the northwestern town of Vidin. The country has halted all power exports due to the cold snap. So far, 28 people have been killed in Bulgaria as a result of the weather, including eight who drowned when the icy waters of a small dam swept through their village of Biser in the southeast. Serbian railways, meanwhile, said the famed Balkan Express train that runs from Belgrade to Istanbul would only go as far as Sofia for now because of the flooding in Bulgaria. –Yahoo News

Death-toll from European deep freeze hits 460 as Danube freezes over | The Extinction Protocol: 2012 and beyond

Power cuts in Serbia as Europe's deep freeze threatens national grid

Serbia has started implementing power cuts in a desperate bid to stave off the collapse of its national grid as the country suffers the effects of days of freezing temperatures.

Serbia has started implementing power cuts in a desperate bid to stave off the collapse of its national grid as the country suffers the effects of days of freezing temperatures Photo: AFP


People look at the frozen Danube river in Serbian city Smederevo, 40 kilometers east of capital Belgrade Photo: AFP

By Matthew Day, Warsaw
5:45PM GMT 10 Feb 2012

EPS, the state-run power company, said it would cut power to industry first, warning that unless demand falls by about 10 per cent in the next few days the entire system could collapse under the strain .

It has urged the public via a national television address to save electricity, .

Temperatures as low as -30C have sent demand soaring but also interrupted coal production, restricting supplies to Serbia's coal-fired power stations. With the bad weather affecting neighbouring countries Serbia has also been unable to import extra energy to boost supplies.

Zoran Manasijevic, EPS's assistant director, said that some 2,000 companies will have their power cut over the next few days, but stressed supplies for domestic consumers and vital buildings such as hospitals will remain unaffected.

The power cuts comes as most of Europe still battles the unrelenting grip of a cold front that has brought chaos and death to the continent for almost two weeks.

Thick ice on most of the River Danube from Austria to the Black Sea has made Europe's busiest waterway impassable to traffic, and on Friday Hungary became the latest country to suspended all shipping on the river.

"Shipping was ordered to stop overnight Thursday to Friday because of conditions created by icing along the Hungarian part of the river," said Istvan Lang, who heads the national technical supervisory body OMIT.

"All ships still underway must immediately head for the closest harbour."

On Serbian stretches of the river authorities have resorted to explosives to blast a way through the ice.

River transport on the River Elbe in Germany has also been disrupted by ice flows, and even coastal traffic has been affected by sea ice as thick as four inches.

Ice has now prevented boats reaching Germany's East Frisian Islands in the North Sea prompting an airlift of essential goods when food started to run out.

Some 70,000 people in Serbia remain cut off by the thick snow that has blanketed the Balkans, and state authorities have had to resort to helicopters to fly in supplies of food. In Romania 20,000 people have to contend with dwindling food supplies after snow as deep as 13 feet cut them off from the rest of the world.

The death toll attributed to the deep freeze has now reached 540 as is expected to continue to climb with temperatures predicted to remain well below -20 C over the weekend in much of central and eastern Europe.

Forecasters in the Czech Republic have also warned that night-time temperatures could crash to as low as -40C in the mountains.

In Ukraine 140, mostly homeless, people have died despite the provision of the emergency shelter and food, while in Poland the figure has climbed to 82.

Even in Italy, which has for the most part escaped the full wrath of the cold front, 25 people have died in the past 10 days, and forecasters predict that as much as 11 inches of snow could fall on Rome over the weekend as the country experiences its coldest temperatures in almost 30 years

PIC AND PUB PLSEurope cold weather: Power cuts in Serbia - Telegraph