Big freeze traps 11,000 as tolls hits 122

By Dusan Stojanovic Belgrade, Serbia

Friday, February 03, 2012

At least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia’s mountains, authorities announced, as the death toll from Eastern Europe’s week-long deep freeze rose to 122.

The stranded live in some 6,500 homes located in remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads, emergency police official Predrag Maric said. Emergency crews were pressing hard to try to clear the snow and deliver badly needed supplies.

"We are trying everything to unblock the roads since more snow and blizzards are expected in the coming days," Maric said.

He said "the most dramatic" situation is near Serbia’s southwestern town of Sijenica, where it has been freezing cold or snowing for 26 days, and diesel fuel supplies are running low.

Newly reported deaths because of the cold included 20 in Ukraine, nine in Poland, eight in Romania, and one more each in Serbia and the Czech Republic. Officials said most of victims were homeless.

Polish government spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said her country’s victims were mostly homeless people under the influence of alcohol who had sought shelter in unheated buildings.

In Ukraine, 63 people have died from the cold in the last week. Nearly 950 others were hospitalised with hypothermia and frostbite, and more than 2,000 heated tents have been set up with hot food for the homeless.

In Romania, the health ministry raised the number of cold-related deaths there to 22.

Three ships were blocked on the Danube River — one German, one Dutch and one Romanian — and efforts were made to unblock them from ice.

Meanwhile, winter is set to drag on for six more weeks, according to Pennsylvania’s famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil.

He emerged from his lair and saw his shadow, in the process predicting more cold weather.

The groundhog made his annual "prediction" on Gobbler’s Knob, a tiny hill in the town for which he is named about 90km north-east of Pittsburgh.

Temperatures were near freezing when he emerged at dawn — unseasonably warm — and are forecast to climb into the mid-40s Fahrenheit in a winter that has brought little snow to much of the eastern US.

The ceremony is largely that: Phil’s prediction is determined ahead of time by the Inner Circle, a group which dons top hats and tuxedos and decides in advance what the groundhog will predict.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, February 03, 2012