Thousands without power as severe storm lashes Baltics

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*
Perilous Times and Global Warming

Thousands without power as severe storm lashes Baltics*

RIGA, Jan 15 (AFP) Jan 15, 2007

Rescuers battling high winds winched to safety Monday most of the crew
of a cargo ship that ran aground off Latvia in a fierce storm which also
knocked out power to thousands in Latvia and Lithuania.

A Latvian Air Force MI-17 helicopter and a Swedish rescue helicopter
evacuated 16 of the 24 crew members of the Cyprus-flagged "Golden Sky"
cargo vessel.

The captain of the ship, which is carrying 25,000 tonnes of mineral
fertilizers and also has 446 tonnes of residual fuel oil and 45 tonnes
of diesel fuel on board, decided that eight crew members should remain
on board.

The ship had sent out an emergency signal after running onto a sandbank
about 1.5 kilometers (one mile) off the coast of northwestern Latvia,
officials said.

"Sixteen crew members have been rescued, eight are still on board,"
Andris Sulcs of the rescue services in the Latvian port of Ventspils
told AFP.

The rescue operation was hampered by waves as high as three metres (nine
feet) and winds gusting at around 110 kilometers per hour (68 miles per
hour).

"The ship is being watched from the helicopters now to make sure that
there are no oil spills; it is carrying 500 tonnes of oil," Sulcs said,
adding that the "Golden Sky" was not in danger of sinking.

Most of the crew members on board the ship, which had left Ventspils for
India, were Filipinos, Sulcs said.

The storm hit coastal regions of Latvia and Lithuania particularly hard,
Andris Siksnis, spokesman for Latvian electricity company Latvenergo, said.

"Everyone who walked out of their home last night could tell that this
was serious," Siksnis told AFP.

In Latvia, up to 50,000 people were left without electricity at the peak
of the storm, he said, adding that "a large number of cables have been
fixed by now but some 20,000 clients are still without power."

In Lithuania, 70,000 customers were without electricity, more than half
of them in the western, coastal part of the country, officials said.

"The situation is quite difficult as many places cannot be reached
because of uprooted trees or mud," Rasa Kropaite, spokeswoman for
Lithuania's Vakaru Skirstomieji Tinklai, which manages one of two
distribution grids, told AFP.

"But all our emergency teams are working and we hope to restore energy
supplies to most consumers by the end of the day."

Lithuania's fire and rescue department reported that the strong winds
uprooted trees, blew over advertising billboards and damaged traffic lights.

The water level in the Dane River, which runs through the Lithuanian
Baltic seaport of Klaipeda, rose close to critical levels and parts of
the city were flooded.

Klaipeda port was shut from midday Sunday until Monday morning, when the
winds had died down to around 72 kilometers per hour (43 mph), officials
said.

In the Latvian capital, Riga, the Daugava River flooded, causing huge
traffic snarls on Monday morning.

A 70-year-old woman in Lithuania reportedly took a heavy blow to the
head when the high winds pushed her into an electricity pylon.

And huge waves washed away the picturesque, landmark dunes in the
Lithuanian seaside resort of Palanga, officials said.

The storm hit nearly two years to the day after an even more powerful
winter storm battered northern Europe, knocking out electricity to
nearly 390,000 people in Latvia alone, Latvenergo's Siksnis recalled.