Death toll in Russian big freeze reaches 40
A spell of Arctic cold claimed five more lives in Moscow overnight, pushing Russia’s nationwide toll beyond 40 and killing five people in Estonia and Moldova, delaying trains and slowing traffic, officials said today.
Most of the victims in Moscow were homeless or drunk people, the city emergency medical service said in a statement.
Nineteen other people have been taken to hospital with hypothermia, the service said. The latest cold deaths have brought the death toll for Moscow - locked in a deep freeze since late Monday – to more than 20.
The true figure, however, is likely higher because authorities in many regions were not reporting cold deaths.
The big freeze has spread beyond Russia’s western borders, killing four people in Estonia, media reports said. Authorities in the ex-Soviet republic of Moldova said Saturday that one man had frozen to death.
The cold also hit Poland, delaying trains, snarling traffic and prompting the Cabinet to allocate additional funds for homeless shelters and social services in an effort to protect poverty-stricken people. “We have to react to keep people from freezing,” Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said.
In the eastern Podlaskie province, where temperatures plunged to -27 C (-17 F), the cold triggered temporary power outages to 1,900 homes.
Moscow temperatures today warmed to -22 C (-8 F) after Thursday’s -31 C (-24 F) was the lowest on that date since 1927.
The city weather service said, however, that temperatures in the capital were unlikely to rise above -20 C (-4 F) before February.
This winter is the coldest in the capital since 1978-1979, when temperatures reached -38 C (-36.4 F).
The cold has severely strained the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, with electricity use surging to record levels as towns and cities struggled to keep indoor temperatures up and Russians turned to supplemental heating sources including electric radiators to keep warm.
The use of gas heaters has resulted in several explosions. A gas canister exploded late Friday in an apartment building in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, injuring nine residents, the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
And in the town of Gus-Khrustalny, some 100 miles east of Moscow, several gas canisters exploded on the ground floor of a five-story apartment building, killing at least one person and injuring 10 late Friday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The cold spell forced schoolchildren to stay home, while vendors at Moscow’s outdoor food and clothing markets shuttered their booths and outdoor cash machines reportedly froze up. Traffic was uncharacteristically light as drivers were reluctant to venture out or unable to start their engines.
