KIEV, Ukraine -- Health officials say 151 people have died in the Ukraine during Eastern Europe's record-breaking cold spell, with alcohol regularly a contributing factor.
he health ministry said Thursday that nearly 4,000 others have been hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite.
Emergency officials say in 90 percent of cases, people died because they were under the influence of alcohol, which increases the risk of hypothermia and generally decreases a person's ability to feel and respond to the cold.
The cold spell has prompted authorities to close nurseries, schools and colleges across the country.
Heavy snowfalls have also caused power outages and trapped hundreds of vehicles on motorways in southern Ukraine, as well as several ships in the Sea of Azov.
Since the end of January, Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine hav been pummeled by the deep freeze, which has brought the heaviest blizzards in recent memory.
Tens of thousands have been trapped in often-freezing homes and villages by walls of snow and unpassable roads, and officials have struggled to reach out to the vulnerable with emergency food airlifts.
Authorities in Russia said 205 people have died this year in the frigid cold, while Poland had 107.
Seven people have died in Romania during a 24 hour period this week, bringing the total there to 86 deaths.
In Lithuania, there have been 23 deaths.
Deaths were also reported in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia.
In hard-hit Romania, some 23,000 people remain isolated in 225 eastern communities where more than one week of heavy snow has blocked roads and wreaked havoc on the rail network.
Residents were worried that their houses could collapse under the heavy snow as authorities struggled to bring them food, water, medicine and wood.
Showing posts with label Weather.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weather.. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Warm and snowy New Year’s Eve forecast for Moscow
The Fobos meteorological bureau is forecasting a “European variant” of weather for New Year’s Eve.
“During the day the temperature will be 0 to -2 degrees [Celsius] and New Year’s night the thermometer will show -1 to -3 degrees,” RIA Novosti quoted a press spokesperson as saying on Thursday. The bureau said it is also expecting heavy snowfalls on New Year’s Eve.
“During the day the temperature will be 0 to -2 degrees [Celsius] and New Year’s night the thermometer will show -1 to -3 degrees,” RIA Novosti quoted a press spokesperson as saying on Thursday. The bureau said it is also expecting heavy snowfalls on New Year’s Eve.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Deadly hurricane strikes Russia's Far East
A hurricane in Russia’s Amur Region killed one person, injured 30 and caused 80 million rubles of damage.
Strong winds ripped apart buildings in Blagoveshchensk on Sunday, causing extensive power cuts, regional spokesman Anton Ivlev said.
The dead man was a 30-year-old resident of the city who died in hospital after the whirlwind struck.
It was described the first ever tornado to strike a built-up area in Russia.
Friday, 15 July 2011
Sweltering weekend for Moscow
Moscow is facing its hottest weekend this year, with temperatures set to reach 33-34C.
Russia’s chief meteorologist Roman Vilfand warned that this was about eight degrees above average, and could prove dangerous to residents.
But he added that it was not at the same levels as last year’s record-breaking hot spell, when the mercury topped 35C.
Sweltering weekend for Moscow
Moscow is facing its hottest weekend this year, with temperatures set to reach 33-34C.
Russia’s chief meteorologist Roman Vilfand warned that this was about eight degrees above average, and could prove dangerous to residents.
But he added that it was not at the same levels as last year’s record-breaking hot spell, when the mercury topped 35C.
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Miracle machine to clean Moscow air
Yuri Tkachenko may soon be dubbed the rain king if he can prove his invention really can chase away the smog and wash down Moscow’s muggy streets with much-needed rain.
Tkachenko, who calls himself the world’s only professor of magnetology came back to Russia from the UAE to show off his gadget and said just 15 similar devices could banish pollution from our sickly skies.
Tkachenko showed off his machine to Komsomolskaya Pravda in an industrial area next to Moscow’s ring road. It looks like a harp with dozens of aluminum plates set at various angles to each other and with thin metallic threads stretched between them.
“The threads are as thin as human hair, there are several thousand of them,” boasts Tkachenko. “They are under a high voltage. Thanks to this, the construction generates negative ions, which attract other positively charged ions – dust, ash, and various negative emissions. Every one of “my” ions collects several “dust” ions. Some of them drift up to into the atmosphere, and some fall to the ground.”
As Tkachenko took his machine for a whirl, a circle of clear blue appeared in the smoggy sky, KP reported. The air in the circle was surprisingly fresh, “like early morning in the mountains.”
Tkachenko’s miracle machine can be used not only to rid the air of smoke but to summon the rain, which even the prayers Russian patriarch Kirill and his fire-stricken flock have so far failed to do.
“Part of each cloud consists of positively charged ions, and if the generator can attract those it can attract the cloud itself. My estimates are that the effect can be felt at a distance of 100 km. It is not difficult to turn the attracted cloud into a rain cloud. We use this tactic in the Emirates to bring rain,” Tkachenko said.
A year ago a group of scientists tried to do the opposite and stop the rain with a device they invented, but the weather gods did not oblige and the rain kept pouring.
Tkachenko claims that rich Arab oil sheikhs are queuing up for his device and he is currently building one that takes up a square kilometer in Dubai. Tkachenko, who was born in Russia but has lived in UAE for more than 10 years, claims that he has 82 patents and that his devices are operating in 25 countries. He said he has received some contracts from the Moscow authorities to clean a pond in the city. There were reports that his magnetic technologies are to be used in medicine, farming and industry and that 20 billion roubles have been allocated for the project.
“Today no one can cause rain and predict the weather’s anomalies,” Albert Chernikov, the director of Central aerological observatory of Rosgidromet said in an interview in August.
He said these ion technologies have existed since the sixties, and they can clean the air, “but only with humidity and only in a limited space,” he said. “In order to clean up the air in Moscow, the city would have to be covered with a metallic ion net under high voltage, but it sounds more like science fiction,” he added.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Chemical smog worse than radioactive threat
Muscovites have been choking on a polluting haze since smog engulfed the city and fears have emerged that the spread of the fire smoke could bring worse still. The fallout area from Chernobyl could add radioactive particles to the poisonous soup currently hanging over the Russian capital.
The fires could send radioactive dust in areas affected by the 1986 disaster into the air, Nikolai Schmatkov from the World Wildlife Fund’s Russia office and Vladimir Chuprov of Russian Greenpeace said.
But nuclear energy scientists say the real danger comes not from radioactivity but from other fine particles, already present in the thick cloud. "The concentration of radioactive elements will be so negligible that the smoke itself will be many more times more dangerous than the radioactivity in it," Ravil Bakin of the Institute for Safe Development of Nuclear Energy warned. "Fine dust that contains chemical pollutants is the real danger and is much more poisonous than radioactivity."
400 kilometers to the East of the city about 2,000 army troops and emergency personnel have been fighting fires surrounding Russia's top nuclear research facility in Sarov.
The situation there was "tense but not critical," Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov said after new robotic firefighting equipment was dispatched to the scene.
"There is no threat to the Federal Nuclear Center, and there is no reason for worry," Bulgakov said. The country's nuclear chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said all explosive and radioactive material had been moved off site as a precaution.
Mixing with the smoke from forest and peat bog fires are airborne pollutants such as carbon monoxide. They are four times higher than normal and the worst yet seen in Moscow, city health officials reported.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Russia declares state of emergency over wildfires
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has declared a state of emergency in seven Russian regions because of wildfires fuelled by a heatwave.
The death toll from the fires has risen to 40, the ministry of health said.
The Russian emergencies ministry said 500 new blazes had been discovered over a 24-hour period, but most had been extinguished.
Homes have been burnt in 14 regions of Russia, the worst-hit being Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Ryazan.
Nineteen of the 40 deaths recorded were in Nizhny Novgorod, the health ministry said.
The state of emergency was announced in a decree that also restricted public access to the regions affected.
Moscow is again shrouded in smoke from peat and forest fires outside the city.
The fires, caused by record temperatures and a drought, have affected cereal harvests, driving wheat prices up.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saw some of the fire damage for himself in Nizhny Novgorod region last week. On Monday, he held meetings with regional leaders in Moscow to discuss further help for affected communities.
Russians are bracing themselves for another week of high temperatures, with forecasts of up to 40C (104F) for central and southern regions.
Officials also expect stronger winds in some regions, which will fan the flames.
By Sunday night, wildfires were still raging across some 128,000 ha (316,000 acres).
Thousands of people have lost their homes and nearly a quarter of a million emergency workers have been deployed to fight the flames.
Moscow doctors say the elderly and toddlers should wear gauze masks outdoors.
The city of Kazan, on the Volga river east of Moscow, was also blanketed in smog on Monday, an eyewitness told the BBC.
Marek Zaremba-Pike said Kazan's air "smells of burnt wood and tastes of dust".
"Usually we can see the Kazan Kremlin very clearly, but visibility is poor. You can't see it at all, just the river bank."
More famous for its bitterly cold winters, the giant country's European part normally enjoys short, warm summers.
However, July was the hottest month on record. In Moscow, which sees an average high of 23C in the summer months, recorded 37.8C last Thursday.
Emergency officials say the heat and drought are the main causes of the fires, but they also blame human carelessness, and urged people to use extreme caution when walking or driving in the woods or countryside.
"Any source of fire, including a cigarette thrown from a car window, will ignite the dried grass," the emergencies ministry said
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Saturday, 27 February 2010
It’s the season of falling ice, a perilous time in Kyiv
Critics blame slow municipal government for not doing more to clear ice blocks from building rooftops?
The snowfalls have been more than brief flurries this winter. And the layers of packed snow and ice have brought their own hardship: One person has been killed and thousands have been injured on Kyiv’s slippery streets.
Until the spring thaw, Kyivans are warned to walk as far from buildings as they can and to look up so as to get out of the way of falling icicles and ice blocks.
Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, long thought to be on vacation somewhere warm, even snapped into action. He asked citizens to alert him about dangerous ice-block formations on the city’s roofs and promised to remove them – pronto. If only the same could happen with the city’s uncollected garbage.
“This is a very serious question, so I’m taking it under my personal control. I appeal to all Kyivans not to be indifferent and to call me personally 1551 and report icicles,” he said on Feb 19. The mayor asked companies and state authorities that manage properties to pick up ice picks and clear off snow-clad roofs.
For some people, however, this wake-up call came too late. Pensioner Galyna Zinyuk, 78, was one of them. She went out for a walk with her husband on Feb 21 to the Park of Glory in the Pechersk district and was hit by a brick of ice. It dropped from the roof of the National State Transport University and landed right on Zinyuk’s head. According to witness reports, she died on the spot.
By law, owners of commercial and state properties are responsible for getting rid of the snow. When Zinyuk died, the prosecutors opened a criminal case against the transport university, which failed to remove icicles on time.
As if waking from a long winter sleep, city authorities called a few emergency meetings to respond to the icy crisis. “All the dangerous places near buildings should be sealed off with warning tapes, and I particularly request that Kyiv residents walk around such zones,” Chernovetsky said.
Municipal workers followed the orders, cordoning off many pavements with red-and-white tape. Cars parked along curbs took a good share of the remaining walking space, leaving people the choice of venturing under roofs or dodging speeding traffic.
“We receive 30 to 35 people daily,” said Yevhen Kasyan, a doctor in the Shevchenko accident clinic. It’s twice more than last year, he said, and "there are more fractures than before.”
The mayor’s office reported 10 cases of people hurt by icicles within the last few days. The total number of people who suffered from unusually severe weather conditions this winter is yet to be announced. The casualty list, however, may hit thousands.
Yevheniya Alexandrova, 29, suffered a concussion when she slipped while walking on the side street. “In the city center, they [communal workers] at least clean something. In residential districts, roads have not just turned into skating rinks, they are like icebergs,” Alexandrova said. “My leg was injured, but I didn’t realize that my head was hurt too. I called the local clinic but no one was there on the weekend. In the accident ward, they [doctors] said they did not have an X-ray unit, so I had to wait until Monday to find out [my diagnosis].”
Alexandrova did not sue the communal authorities responsible for clearing pavements. “To invite a plumber, you have to wait until he sobers up. So when it comes to a complaint as big as mine, it’s useless to fight,” she said.
City authorities in January admitted they did not cope with snow well. Chernovetsky even offered people not to pay for street-cleaning services if their yards were overwhelmed with snow. Many Kyiv residents received their monthly utility bills with deductions for snow trouble as small as Hr 2.
“If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny,” said Alexandrova, who spent almost two weeks in bed.
It’s one thing to flap and flounder as the snow piles higher, and it is another to make timely decisions.
Building climber Yury Nikolayev from Actual Service cleaning business said that the city woke up too late to the problem. “Only when overwhelmed by snow, they started acting. Before that, they waited indifferently. Just yesterday, I had one company ring me up at 5 a.m. because ice broke through their window, which could have been removed beforehand.”
He said there are still many icicles in the city and, with the weather getting warmer, they would be showering down in the blink of an eye. “If a five-kilo ice block falls from the fourth floor, it hits the ground with the power of more than 75 kilos,” said Nikolayev.
Anxious citizens say it is time for business owners and city officials to do their math and remove the dangerous ice clusters before it is too late.
The snowfalls have been more than brief flurries this winter. And the layers of packed snow and ice have brought their own hardship: One person has been killed and thousands have been injured on Kyiv’s slippery streets.
Until the spring thaw, Kyivans are warned to walk as far from buildings as they can and to look up so as to get out of the way of falling icicles and ice blocks.
Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, long thought to be on vacation somewhere warm, even snapped into action. He asked citizens to alert him about dangerous ice-block formations on the city’s roofs and promised to remove them – pronto. If only the same could happen with the city’s uncollected garbage.
“This is a very serious question, so I’m taking it under my personal control. I appeal to all Kyivans not to be indifferent and to call me personally 1551 and report icicles,” he said on Feb 19. The mayor asked companies and state authorities that manage properties to pick up ice picks and clear off snow-clad roofs.
For some people, however, this wake-up call came too late. Pensioner Galyna Zinyuk, 78, was one of them. She went out for a walk with her husband on Feb 21 to the Park of Glory in the Pechersk district and was hit by a brick of ice. It dropped from the roof of the National State Transport University and landed right on Zinyuk’s head. According to witness reports, she died on the spot.
By law, owners of commercial and state properties are responsible for getting rid of the snow. When Zinyuk died, the prosecutors opened a criminal case against the transport university, which failed to remove icicles on time.
As if waking from a long winter sleep, city authorities called a few emergency meetings to respond to the icy crisis. “All the dangerous places near buildings should be sealed off with warning tapes, and I particularly request that Kyiv residents walk around such zones,” Chernovetsky said.
Municipal workers followed the orders, cordoning off many pavements with red-and-white tape. Cars parked along curbs took a good share of the remaining walking space, leaving people the choice of venturing under roofs or dodging speeding traffic.
“We receive 30 to 35 people daily,” said Yevhen Kasyan, a doctor in the Shevchenko accident clinic. It’s twice more than last year, he said, and "there are more fractures than before.”
The mayor’s office reported 10 cases of people hurt by icicles within the last few days. The total number of people who suffered from unusually severe weather conditions this winter is yet to be announced. The casualty list, however, may hit thousands.
Yevheniya Alexandrova, 29, suffered a concussion when she slipped while walking on the side street. “In the city center, they [communal workers] at least clean something. In residential districts, roads have not just turned into skating rinks, they are like icebergs,” Alexandrova said. “My leg was injured, but I didn’t realize that my head was hurt too. I called the local clinic but no one was there on the weekend. In the accident ward, they [doctors] said they did not have an X-ray unit, so I had to wait until Monday to find out [my diagnosis].”
Alexandrova did not sue the communal authorities responsible for clearing pavements. “To invite a plumber, you have to wait until he sobers up. So when it comes to a complaint as big as mine, it’s useless to fight,” she said.
City authorities in January admitted they did not cope with snow well. Chernovetsky even offered people not to pay for street-cleaning services if their yards were overwhelmed with snow. Many Kyiv residents received their monthly utility bills with deductions for snow trouble as small as Hr 2.
“If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny,” said Alexandrova, who spent almost two weeks in bed.
It’s one thing to flap and flounder as the snow piles higher, and it is another to make timely decisions.
Building climber Yury Nikolayev from Actual Service cleaning business said that the city woke up too late to the problem. “Only when overwhelmed by snow, they started acting. Before that, they waited indifferently. Just yesterday, I had one company ring me up at 5 a.m. because ice broke through their window, which could have been removed beforehand.”
He said there are still many icicles in the city and, with the weather getting warmer, they would be showering down in the blink of an eye. “If a five-kilo ice block falls from the fourth floor, it hits the ground with the power of more than 75 kilos,” said Nikolayev.
Anxious citizens say it is time for business owners and city officials to do their math and remove the dangerous ice clusters before it is too late.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Russia’s weather out of whack
January has seen temperatures in European Russia plunge 5 degrees Celsius below a 30-year average, but this is simply more evidence of man-made climate change, Russia's climatologists say.
"Nature is looking for a new balance," said Viktor Danelyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciencies, of the record warm temperatures in December, followed by January's freeze.
"What that equilibrium will be - no one can tell. Once the various regional factors stabilise, the climate will be warmer in general. And the weather volatility we are seeing today will settle down. We can only hope that the new equilibrium is not too warm, because that will negatively affect life on earth."
The debate over global warming has become increasingly bitter in recent months, with environmental activists blaming top polluting nations for failing to agree deeper emissions cuts at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
eanwhile, in the so-called "Climategate" scandal, hacked scientists' e-mails were seized on by sceptics as evidence that data was being cherry-picked to support environmentalists' arguments.
Climatologists in Russia, where President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed to allow a small increase on current greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, agree that the weather here is becoming warmer, as least in part to man-made factors.
"The abnormally cold weather we are seeing does not contradict things," said Vladimir Katsov, a climatologist at the Voyeikov Geophysical Observatory in St. Petersburg. "So-called weather neuroses increase during periods of climate change."
But the problem is in oversimplifying a complex and ill-understood process, scientists say.
"There are a lot of periodic changes - short-term, long term, mid-term. They all overlap, and all this creates climate volatility." said Danelyan.
"The anthropogenic factor is adding to this natural volatility, leading to warming. If global warming was supposed to be happening naturally, now it's happening even faster."
When overlapping with natural factors, scientists say global warming results in erratic weather. For instance, climatologists believe that the recent cold spell in Europe is caused by Arctic oscillation, with lower atmospheric pressure contributing to cold Arctic air moving further south. "Arctic oscillation is a perfect example of a natural process of weather fluctuation, not connected to external or man-made factors," said Kattsov. But there's a catch - these natural fluctuations can act to offset or exacerbate anthropogenic global warming."
This year marks the start of an expected natural cold phase that will last for a few years, Danelyan said. "But there are other factors connected to regional peculiarities that were not foreseen. Because of the shrinking Arctic ice cap, Siberian winters are becoming harsher. This is in addition to the Arctic oscillation, and it's intensifying the cold snap."
But that doesn't mean that Siberian winters will get colder in the long run. A combination of natural periodic climate change and gas emissions will mean that the average global temperature - now 14 degrees Celsius - will increase by 0.75 degrees per decade. By cutting emissions, Kattsov says, we can reduce the temperature increase by 2 degrees.
"It's widely believed that an increase in average temperatures over the next few decades would be good for Russia," said Kattsov. "But a number of factors make Russia vulnerable. The thawing of permafrost is one of those. On the one hand, a shorter heating season is economically beneficial, but we shouldn't forget the southern regions, where hotter weather and heat waves will mean more energy spent on air conditioning."
Igor Podgorny, a Greenpeace official, said any benefit to agriculture from shorter winters would be offset by erratic weather. "Scientists have talked about erratic cold spells as a result of global warming," he said. "Late cold spells will freeze crops."
But Gennady Yeliseyev, who heads Russia's Meteorology Centre, remains reluctant to draw any conclusions from January's cold snap.
"The weather is not the same thing as climate," said Yeliseyev. "Volatile weather is part of a natural process ... If we get a lot of air from the south, from Africa, then we will have abnormally warm temperatures, which we saw a few years ago when the first snow came in late January.
If we get air from the north or east we'll have cold weather. These are all normal atmospheric processes."
Declining to comment on global warming, Yeliseyev was fatalistic about scientists' ability to understand the weather. "Long-term forecasts are only about 60 per cent to 70 per cent accurate," he said.
"Nature is looking for a new balance," said Viktor Danelyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciencies, of the record warm temperatures in December, followed by January's freeze.
"What that equilibrium will be - no one can tell. Once the various regional factors stabilise, the climate will be warmer in general. And the weather volatility we are seeing today will settle down. We can only hope that the new equilibrium is not too warm, because that will negatively affect life on earth."
The debate over global warming has become increasingly bitter in recent months, with environmental activists blaming top polluting nations for failing to agree deeper emissions cuts at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
eanwhile, in the so-called "Climategate" scandal, hacked scientists' e-mails were seized on by sceptics as evidence that data was being cherry-picked to support environmentalists' arguments.
Climatologists in Russia, where President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed to allow a small increase on current greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, agree that the weather here is becoming warmer, as least in part to man-made factors.
"The abnormally cold weather we are seeing does not contradict things," said Vladimir Katsov, a climatologist at the Voyeikov Geophysical Observatory in St. Petersburg. "So-called weather neuroses increase during periods of climate change."
But the problem is in oversimplifying a complex and ill-understood process, scientists say.
"There are a lot of periodic changes - short-term, long term, mid-term. They all overlap, and all this creates climate volatility." said Danelyan.
"The anthropogenic factor is adding to this natural volatility, leading to warming. If global warming was supposed to be happening naturally, now it's happening even faster."
When overlapping with natural factors, scientists say global warming results in erratic weather. For instance, climatologists believe that the recent cold spell in Europe is caused by Arctic oscillation, with lower atmospheric pressure contributing to cold Arctic air moving further south. "Arctic oscillation is a perfect example of a natural process of weather fluctuation, not connected to external or man-made factors," said Kattsov. But there's a catch - these natural fluctuations can act to offset or exacerbate anthropogenic global warming."
This year marks the start of an expected natural cold phase that will last for a few years, Danelyan said. "But there are other factors connected to regional peculiarities that were not foreseen. Because of the shrinking Arctic ice cap, Siberian winters are becoming harsher. This is in addition to the Arctic oscillation, and it's intensifying the cold snap."
But that doesn't mean that Siberian winters will get colder in the long run. A combination of natural periodic climate change and gas emissions will mean that the average global temperature - now 14 degrees Celsius - will increase by 0.75 degrees per decade. By cutting emissions, Kattsov says, we can reduce the temperature increase by 2 degrees.
"It's widely believed that an increase in average temperatures over the next few decades would be good for Russia," said Kattsov. "But a number of factors make Russia vulnerable. The thawing of permafrost is one of those. On the one hand, a shorter heating season is economically beneficial, but we shouldn't forget the southern regions, where hotter weather and heat waves will mean more energy spent on air conditioning."
Igor Podgorny, a Greenpeace official, said any benefit to agriculture from shorter winters would be offset by erratic weather. "Scientists have talked about erratic cold spells as a result of global warming," he said. "Late cold spells will freeze crops."
But Gennady Yeliseyev, who heads Russia's Meteorology Centre, remains reluctant to draw any conclusions from January's cold snap.
"The weather is not the same thing as climate," said Yeliseyev. "Volatile weather is part of a natural process ... If we get a lot of air from the south, from Africa, then we will have abnormally warm temperatures, which we saw a few years ago when the first snow came in late January.
If we get air from the north or east we'll have cold weather. These are all normal atmospheric processes."
Declining to comment on global warming, Yeliseyev was fatalistic about scientists' ability to understand the weather. "Long-term forecasts are only about 60 per cent to 70 per cent accurate," he said.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Severe Winter Weather Slams Ukraine .
ODESSA, Ukraine -- Severe winter in Ukraine has left thousands of drivers stranded and dozens of villages without power, local media reported Friday. Heavy snow that knocked down power lines left 158 villages and towns in the former Soviet republic without power, said officials from the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES).
The worst-hit region was Ukraine's usually snow-free south and east, where high winds and heavy snow fall had piled up drifts in excess of a metre at some locations, MES director Ihor Krol was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.Between five and eight thousand cars and lorries were stranded Thursday evening on a highway to the west of the Black Sea port city Odessa, forcing drivers and passengers to abandon their vehicles and seek shelter.Road-clearing and emergency-assistance teams sent by local officials were assisting the motorists, the Odessa-based news agency Liga reported."There have not been any deaths or injuries, but some of the drivers are panicking, which is interfering with the assistance effort," said Denys Kostenko, a Odessa-based MES spokesman.The traffic jam of stuck and abandoned vehicles blocked a 6- kilometre stretch of highway on Thursday, he said.Anatoly Vorokhaev, Odessa deputy mayor, told the Korrespondent website that poor driver preparation for winter roads was contributing to the difficulties."One of the main reasons for ... the traffic jams is that motorists have not put winter tyres on their vehicles, and lots of times they are just driving on bald tyres," he said.Stuck vehicles and delays of six hours and more were also reported on highways in Ukraine's eastern Kherson and Donetsk provinces.Traffic police on Thursday evening closed a heavily travelled intercity roadway in Kherson province to nighttime use.
The worst-hit region was Ukraine's usually snow-free south and east, where high winds and heavy snow fall had piled up drifts in excess of a metre at some locations, MES director Ihor Krol was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.Between five and eight thousand cars and lorries were stranded Thursday evening on a highway to the west of the Black Sea port city Odessa, forcing drivers and passengers to abandon their vehicles and seek shelter.Road-clearing and emergency-assistance teams sent by local officials were assisting the motorists, the Odessa-based news agency Liga reported."There have not been any deaths or injuries, but some of the drivers are panicking, which is interfering with the assistance effort," said Denys Kostenko, a Odessa-based MES spokesman.The traffic jam of stuck and abandoned vehicles blocked a 6- kilometre stretch of highway on Thursday, he said.Anatoly Vorokhaev, Odessa deputy mayor, told the Korrespondent website that poor driver preparation for winter roads was contributing to the difficulties."One of the main reasons for ... the traffic jams is that motorists have not put winter tyres on their vehicles, and lots of times they are just driving on bald tyres," he said.Stuck vehicles and delays of six hours and more were also reported on highways in Ukraine's eastern Kherson and Donetsk provinces.Traffic police on Thursday evening closed a heavily travelled intercity roadway in Kherson province to nighttime use.
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