– Europe’s Danube freezes over, cold snap toll at 460 (ZEENEWS, Feb. 11, 2012):
Belgrade: 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 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 yesterday 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 last Friday.
Temperatures in Bulgaria dropped to a new record low on Thursday of minus 28.6 degrees Celsius 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.
In the Czech Republic, another homeless man froze to death in Kolin, bringing the country’s toll to 25, and forecasters said temperatures could plunge to minus 40 Celsius in the mountains and minus 25 Celsius in Prague on Saturday night. Another blast of freezing weather was also predicted for Italy, even as soldiers worked to free villages trapped in three metres of snow and with the death toll from the cold snap already at 43.
Forecasts said freezing winds would pick up and bring more snow today and tomorrow to Rome, just recovering from its biggest snowfall in decades.