Wild Winter weather kills at least 50 in Poland
Pastor Dale Morgan
Wild Winter Weather Kills at Least 50 in Poland*
December 20, 2009 - 11:04PM
AFP
Polish police say at least 20 more people froze to death in the country
overnight as temperatures fell as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius in
some places.
Police also appealed on Sunday to Poles to alert police if they found
homeless or drunk people lying outdoors in an attempt to lower the
number of people who die each winter from the bitter cold.
Police say at least 50 people have already frozen to death countrywide
since the beginning of December.
Another homeless Pole froze to death while sheltering in a doorway in
the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, and a Frenchman was found
dead in his ice-cold caravan near the northern town of Arras.
In Germany, a 46-year-old homeless man froze to death overnight in the
southwestern city of Mannheim while sleeping on a bare pavement, while
temperatures in Bavaria plunged to a glacial minus 33.6 degrees Celsius.
Two more Germans died in road accidents caused by the icy conditions.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of European travellers were stranded in
rail stations, traffic jams and airports by heavy snow and ice which
caused massive disruption at the start of the Christmas holiday season.
Roads and railways were closed or disrupted by snow drifts, black ice or
floods across northern and western Europe, from Portugal to the Netherlands,
and flights from London, Brussels and Paris airports were delayed.
The most crippling problems hit cross-Channel transport between Britain
and France, amid chaotic scenes after the Eurostar passenger service
from London to Paris was shut down following at least five breakdowns.
Eurostar, the operator of the Channel Tunnel passenger trains, admitted
it could not say when services would resume, with more than 24,000
passengers attempting to travel ahead of Christmas already affected.
The company said it would send test trains along the route to see if
they could withstand the sub-zero temperatures in northern France which
are believed to have caused trains to break down in the tunnel on Friday.
"We did run two or three trains yesterday, they all got through the
tunnel OK, but one or two of them showed symptoms of the problem that
happened on Friday night," Eurostar director Richard Brown told the BBC.
"We will not start services again until we're sure that we can get them
through safely," he said.
More than 2,000 passengers spent Friday night trapped in the undersea
tunnel, some without anything to eat or drink. There were reports of
heated rows and some passengers bitterly criticised the company.
"Eurotunnel has advised us that waiting times are up to two hours at the
terminal," Kent police Superintendent Matthew Nix said, warning car and
truck drivers without reservations to stay away.
At Paris' Charles de Gaulle 40 per cent of flights were cancelled and
the remaining services were leaving an average of one hour late, while
the city's second airport Orly was the scene of a strike by security staff.
In the Belgian capital Brussels a flight was able to leave just after
sunrise for Seville in Spain, but afterwards heavy snow forced
authorities to
halt all flights, while Thalys trains to Paris and Amsterdam were delayed.
"We're putting everything into clearing the runway as quickly as
possible, but it all depends on how the weather develops," a Brussels
airport spokesman told AFP, as the Belgian football federation cancelled
Sunday's matches.