Europe raises alert as killer cold snap tightens its icy grip
Hungarian villagers scavenged for coal with their bare hands on Thursday as a blast of Siberian air killed scores in Eastern Europe and looked set to keep its icy grip on the continent for another week.
At least 139 people have died across Eastern Europe and Germany since the cold snap began, interrupting what had been an unusually mild European winter.
In the Hungarian village of Farkaslyuk, people clambered up a 30-metre spoil heap from a disused mine to scrape together enough coal to heat their homes and cook for a few days.
The temperature in the mountains near Farkaslyuk, meaning “wolf’s den,” has fallen to -22 Celsius.
The cold snap for Central Europe is expected to continue through the week and beyond as an area of high pressure camps over Russia, pushing cold dry air southwards, said German meteorologist Helmut Malewski.
In Ukraine, the country worst hit by the cold snap, schools shut and supermarkets in the capital, Kyiv, began to report food shortages as delivery trucks struggled in temperatures as low as -25C. Twenty died there in the space of 24 hours, taking the overall toll to 63, many of them homeless.
The Red Cross said it was releasing funds to build shelters for streetdwellers in Belarus and Ukraine, echoing a similar move by governments across the region.
“Homeless people have been caught unawares and unprepared. They don’t follow long-range forecasts and are extremely vulnerable,” said Zlatko Kovac of the Red Cross.
Snow drifts blocking roads and runways, ice seizing up railway points and sub-zero temperatures freezing fuel and car batteries caused more transport misery.
Europe’s weather warning service, Meteoalarm, maintained its red alert warning for Serbia, where 11,000 people in rural areas remained cut off by snow.
Western Europe was also braced for a bitter chill, as the cold front moved westwards.
In Italy, Florence and Siena nestled under a rare blanket of snow, a scene forecasters say could be repeated in Rome later this week. The mayor of Rome ordered all schools to be closed on Friday and Saturday.
Britain’s Met Office put the whole of England on a level 3 alert — the second highest — for severe cold weather through to Sunday, though a tussle between warmer Atlantic air to the west and the Siberian system to the east made forecasts uncertain.