Europe Winter 2012
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Not since 1997, that europe is so cold.
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Europe freeze: Emergencies in Italy, Greece and Serbia
Italy has imposed emergency measures on businesses to conserve gas supplies as freezing weather continues to grip the country and much of Europe.
An "emergency situation" is in place in southern Serbia where 70,000 villagers are stranded by snow.
In Greece, several villages near the Bulgarian border have been evacuated after the River Evros burst its banks.
A day of mourning has been declared in Bulgaria, where a dam collapsed leaving nine people dead,
A 2.5m (8ft) torrent surged through the south-eastern village of Biser on Monday. Five people were killed in the village itself and four more died elsewhere when their cars were swept away by the flood.
Two more dams were said to be on the brink of collapse and officials declared a code orange for much of the country, a severe warning of the risks of damage or injury from the harsh wintry conditions.
In Greece, a state of emergency was declared in the Evros region.
Snow in Milan. 6 Feb 2012 Milan, like many parts of Italy, has suffered freezing conditions
The authorities also said a 40-year-old British woman was drowned in a flash flood on the Aegean island of Symi.
And there was a threat of flooding from the Danube and Ibar rivers in Serbia, where the army was planning to use explosives to break up the ice.
Russian gas
In Italy, snow and ice have brought many public services to a standstill. Temperatures fell as low as -10C in the south and -21C in the north on Tuesday.
Two further deaths were reported and several major roads were blocked.
A woman was found dead early on Tuesday, apparently due to hypothermia, and a man, 86, died after slipping on ice.
More than 25 people have died over the past few days in rare conditions that have seen almost all of Italy blanketed in snow.
The army was brought in to help hundreds of people who were said to have spent Monday night stranded on a road near the southern town of Candela, in Puglia.
Government and industry officials were set to discuss a "critical" energy situation.
Italy imports most of its energy and while gas consumption has soared, supplies from Russia have been reduced.
'Difficult moment'
EU officials deny there is an emergency caused by a drop in gas from Russia but Italian energy company Eni says supplies into Italy are down by 20%.
Russian gas giant Gazprom - which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas - says it is facing greater domestic demand because of the extreme cold.
The Italian government has reassured the public that they will not face cold homes but Eni has spoken of a "difficult moment" and the head of Italy's business organisation, Emma Marcegaglia, said she was "preoccupied" with the situation and with the cuts to supplies faced by businesses.
Some power stations will switch to oil and some industrial customers will have gas supplies cut so homes stay warm.
However, Eni urged private consumers to cut back on energy use as much as possible.
Chief executive Paolo Scaroni said: "We are in an emergency and we have reacted to this emergency by increasing gas imports from Algeria and from northern Europe via Switzerland.
"We won't have problems until Wednesday," he said on news channel Radio 24.
Many of the victims of Europe's cold snap have been homeless people in Ukraine and Poland.
Forecasters says the icy conditions will last at least until the end of this
---------------------------------------------
Europe freeze: Emergencies in Italy, Greece and Serbia
Italy has imposed emergency measures on businesses to conserve gas supplies as freezing weather continues to grip the country and much of Europe.
An "emergency situation" is in place in southern Serbia where 70,000 villagers are stranded by snow.
In Greece, several villages near the Bulgarian border have been evacuated after the River Evros burst its banks.
A day of mourning has been declared in Bulgaria, where a dam collapsed leaving nine people dead,
A 2.5m (8ft) torrent surged through the south-eastern village of Biser on Monday. Five people were killed in the village itself and four more died elsewhere when their cars were swept away by the flood.
Two more dams were said to be on the brink of collapse and officials declared a code orange for much of the country, a severe warning of the risks of damage or injury from the harsh wintry conditions.
In Greece, a state of emergency was declared in the Evros region.
Snow in Milan. 6 Feb 2012 Milan, like many parts of Italy, has suffered freezing conditions
The authorities also said a 40-year-old British woman was drowned in a flash flood on the Aegean island of Symi.
And there was a threat of flooding from the Danube and Ibar rivers in Serbia, where the army was planning to use explosives to break up the ice.
Russian gas
In Italy, snow and ice have brought many public services to a standstill. Temperatures fell as low as -10C in the south and -21C in the north on Tuesday.
Two further deaths were reported and several major roads were blocked.
A woman was found dead early on Tuesday, apparently due to hypothermia, and a man, 86, died after slipping on ice.
More than 25 people have died over the past few days in rare conditions that have seen almost all of Italy blanketed in snow.
The army was brought in to help hundreds of people who were said to have spent Monday night stranded on a road near the southern town of Candela, in Puglia.
Government and industry officials were set to discuss a "critical" energy situation.
Italy imports most of its energy and while gas consumption has soared, supplies from Russia have been reduced.
'Difficult moment'
EU officials deny there is an emergency caused by a drop in gas from Russia but Italian energy company Eni says supplies into Italy are down by 20%.
Russian gas giant Gazprom - which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas - says it is facing greater domestic demand because of the extreme cold.
The Italian government has reassured the public that they will not face cold homes but Eni has spoken of a "difficult moment" and the head of Italy's business organisation, Emma Marcegaglia, said she was "preoccupied" with the situation and with the cuts to supplies faced by businesses.
Some power stations will switch to oil and some industrial customers will have gas supplies cut so homes stay warm.
However, Eni urged private consumers to cut back on energy use as much as possible.
Chief executive Paolo Scaroni said: "We are in an emergency and we have reacted to this emergency by increasing gas imports from Algeria and from northern Europe via Switzerland.
"We won't have problems until Wednesday," he said on news channel Radio 24.
Many of the victims of Europe's cold snap have been homeless people in Ukraine and Poland.
Forecasters says the icy conditions will last at least until the end of this
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European Freeze: Deadly cold front continues
Dam bursts in Bulgaria, five drowned; Toll could be 360
The toll from Europe's killer cold snap hit at least 360 on Monday with nine new victims found in Poland, most of them homeless, and five drowned when a Bulgarian dam burst after torrential rain.
The rain and snowstorms lashing southern Bulgaria collapsed the dam early Monday, submerging the small village of Biser under 2.5 metres (eight feet) of water, emergency services said.
Biser mayor Zlatka Valkova told state news agency BTA three elderly men had drowned in their homes and a massive rescue effort was under way in the village of about 800 people. National radio reported two other people were killed when their car was swept off a bridge.
"People are in panic," regional mayor Mihail Liskov said on national radio. "Ninety percent of the village is under water."
Two larger dams in southern Bulgaria risked spilling over and residents were told to prepare to evacuate. Heavy rains also triggered a landslide that derailed a train near the Turkish border. No injuries were reported.
Meanwhile, temperatures in Poland plunged to as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius (minus 11 Fahrenheit), bringing another deadly night for the homeless.
As has been the case throughout the 10-day-old cold snap, transients have borne the brunt of the suffering, with frozen victims found in abandoned and unheated homes, fire escapes or makeshift shelters on Europe's streets.
In a bid to save lives, Poland's homeless shelters have dropped a ban on drunken individuals.
Monika Golebiewska, a Warsaw police officer whose beat is a daily patrol bringing food and clothing to the homeless in the city's hardscrabble Praga district, said she has been unrelentingly busy since the cold snap started.
"New (fatal) cases are reported to us daily. Just today we got calls telling us about two new ones, one of someone who was living in a tent and another of someone in an abandoned train station," Golebiewska said. "I've got more and more people to feed, but just 40 portions of soup a day."
Overall, 107 people have died of hypothermia in Poland since winter hit in November. The current cold snap began at the end of January and across the continent, authorities have reported at least 360 weather-related deaths.
In neighbouring Lithuania, where the mercury has dipped to minus 31 Celsius (minus 24 Fahrenheit), the deaths of 12 more people over the weekend brought the cold snap's toll to 23.
Hungarian authorities have reported at least 12 dead since the onset of the cold.
Italian authorities continued to clear up after a rare snow storm blanketed Rome over the weekend and crews struggled to restore power to about 60,000 homes across the country, especially in the Tuscan cities of Siena and Arezzo.
Italian energy giant ENI warned earned it may have to cut gas supplied to customers after shortfalls in gas imports from Russia.
Elsewhere across Europe, authorities struggled to clear clogged roads and runways that left tens of thousands of travellers stranded over the weekend.
After cancelling half its flights Sunday, operators of London's Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest passenger hub, said its schedule was almost back to normal Monday.
While parts of Britain were beginning to warm above freezing, other European nations remained in an icy grip.
In the Czech town of Kvilda, near the Czech-German border, the temperature hit minus 39.4 Celsius (minus 38.92 Fahrenheit), the lowest recorded in the country this winter.
Switzerland also recorded year lows, dropping to minus 35.1 Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit) in the eastern Graubuenden canton on Sunday night.
The bitter cold has engulfed most of Europe and even crossed the Mediterranean into north Africa, where as many as 16 people were killed on Algeria's snow-slicked roads or in other weather-related accidents.
Rare snow also fell in southern Tunisia for the first timme in some 40 years, media reported, with temperatures well below freezing in some areas of the country and villages cut off.
In France, 39 of the country's 101 regions were on alert for deep cold or snow, down from more than half the regions at the weekend, as a new record for electricity consumption was predicted later Monday.
Five people have died in weather-related incidents since the cold snap hit France, the latest a 56-year-old homeless man who is believed to have succumbed to hypothermia in a suburb of Paris.
People in the Netherlands, however, were sharpening their skates in the hope that a legendary long-distance race on frozen canals may be held for the first time in 15 years, though organisers cautioned Monday the ice was still too thin.
Dam bursts in Bulgaria, five drowned; Toll could be 360
The toll from Europe's killer cold snap hit at least 360 on Monday with nine new victims found in Poland, most of them homeless, and five drowned when a Bulgarian dam burst after torrential rain.
The rain and snowstorms lashing southern Bulgaria collapsed the dam early Monday, submerging the small village of Biser under 2.5 metres (eight feet) of water, emergency services said.
Biser mayor Zlatka Valkova told state news agency BTA three elderly men had drowned in their homes and a massive rescue effort was under way in the village of about 800 people. National radio reported two other people were killed when their car was swept off a bridge.
"People are in panic," regional mayor Mihail Liskov said on national radio. "Ninety percent of the village is under water."
Two larger dams in southern Bulgaria risked spilling over and residents were told to prepare to evacuate. Heavy rains also triggered a landslide that derailed a train near the Turkish border. No injuries were reported.
Meanwhile, temperatures in Poland plunged to as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius (minus 11 Fahrenheit), bringing another deadly night for the homeless.
As has been the case throughout the 10-day-old cold snap, transients have borne the brunt of the suffering, with frozen victims found in abandoned and unheated homes, fire escapes or makeshift shelters on Europe's streets.
In a bid to save lives, Poland's homeless shelters have dropped a ban on drunken individuals.
Monika Golebiewska, a Warsaw police officer whose beat is a daily patrol bringing food and clothing to the homeless in the city's hardscrabble Praga district, said she has been unrelentingly busy since the cold snap started.
"New (fatal) cases are reported to us daily. Just today we got calls telling us about two new ones, one of someone who was living in a tent and another of someone in an abandoned train station," Golebiewska said. "I've got more and more people to feed, but just 40 portions of soup a day."
Overall, 107 people have died of hypothermia in Poland since winter hit in November. The current cold snap began at the end of January and across the continent, authorities have reported at least 360 weather-related deaths.
In neighbouring Lithuania, where the mercury has dipped to minus 31 Celsius (minus 24 Fahrenheit), the deaths of 12 more people over the weekend brought the cold snap's toll to 23.
Hungarian authorities have reported at least 12 dead since the onset of the cold.
Italian authorities continued to clear up after a rare snow storm blanketed Rome over the weekend and crews struggled to restore power to about 60,000 homes across the country, especially in the Tuscan cities of Siena and Arezzo.
Italian energy giant ENI warned earned it may have to cut gas supplied to customers after shortfalls in gas imports from Russia.
Elsewhere across Europe, authorities struggled to clear clogged roads and runways that left tens of thousands of travellers stranded over the weekend.
After cancelling half its flights Sunday, operators of London's Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest passenger hub, said its schedule was almost back to normal Monday.
While parts of Britain were beginning to warm above freezing, other European nations remained in an icy grip.
In the Czech town of Kvilda, near the Czech-German border, the temperature hit minus 39.4 Celsius (minus 38.92 Fahrenheit), the lowest recorded in the country this winter.
Switzerland also recorded year lows, dropping to minus 35.1 Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit) in the eastern Graubuenden canton on Sunday night.
The bitter cold has engulfed most of Europe and even crossed the Mediterranean into north Africa, where as many as 16 people were killed on Algeria's snow-slicked roads or in other weather-related accidents.
Rare snow also fell in southern Tunisia for the first timme in some 40 years, media reported, with temperatures well below freezing in some areas of the country and villages cut off.
In France, 39 of the country's 101 regions were on alert for deep cold or snow, down from more than half the regions at the weekend, as a new record for electricity consumption was predicted later Monday.
Five people have died in weather-related incidents since the cold snap hit France, the latest a 56-year-old homeless man who is believed to have succumbed to hypothermia in a suburb of Paris.
People in the Netherlands, however, were sharpening their skates in the hope that a legendary long-distance race on frozen canals may be held for the first time in 15 years, though organisers cautioned Monday the ice was still too thin.
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