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Eastern Europe shudders under icy onslaught By Olga Rudenko, Mariya Manzhos, and Beata Biel By Amel Emric, AP "Our thermometers showed minus 26 Fahrenheit last night. Thankfully, the day was much warmer, minus 4," laughed Janina Ewiergocka from Stuposiany, a small village in southeastern Poland. "Such cold weather is nothing new for us; a few years ago, we experienced minus 33 Fahrenheit!" "People seem to be staying at home, not only because it is so cold, but also because most of our cars stopped working," she said. The harsh weather has closed thousands of schools and roads, shut down ports, delayed flights and frozen ATMs. Hundreds of thousands are without power. Emergency workers tried to get the homeless off the streets and rescue trapped elderly people as hospital waiting rooms overflowed. At least 11,000 villagers have been snowed in by blizzards in Serbia's mountains. Ukraine has seen temperatures of 27 below zero. At least 63 people have died there. Almost 1,000 people were treated in hospitals for hypothermia or frostbite, the Kyiv Post reported. The deep freeze came after a three-day storm dumped 16 inches of snow on the capital, Kiev. The cold is not likely to break until at least Feb. 14. Vasyl Zhygalyuk was one of dozens who took shelter at one of 10 tents erected for the homeless in Kiev to get a bite to eat and warm up. "Before, it was possible to make a little cash at the train station," Zhygalyuk said of his sporadic day-labor jobs. Children skating on a river in the eastern city of Zaporizhia made the gruesome discovery of an arm poking through the ice Jan. 29. Authorities cut away the ice to discover a dead man. Warmer weather later in the month will bring its own dangers, such as falling icicles from Kiev's czarist-era buildings. Ice blocks have tumbled from buildings in past winters and killed pedestrians. In Bulgaria, temperatures fell to minus 9 F on Thursday. At least eight people have died from the cold there since early January. "It's terribly cold - such snow and ice I have never seen," said Nikola Kolev, 46, from Devnya. Dozens of villages near the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv were without power for the second day or more in a row. Lazar and Nedialka Lazarovi in Boykovo said they have no electricity and use candles for light and wood for heat. In Romania, 22 people have died in the past week. In Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, freezing weather forced locals inside, and in the southwest Primorska region, wind gusts exceeded 112 mph. "Very few people are using bicycles today, and my cat doesn't want to go out for the first time in past two years," said Ales Berkopec, professor at the University of Ljubljana. The stranded in Serbia are stuck in about 6,500 homes in remote areas that cannot be reached because icy roads are clogged with snow 16 feet high. Emergency crews pressed to clear the snow to deliver supplies, and helicopters were dispatched to some particularly remote areas in Serbia and neighboring Bosnia. In Poland, 29 people have died from cold and 11 from carbon dioxide poisoning because of improper heating, said Pawel Fratczak, spokesman for the National Headquarters of the State Fire Service. "I went to the shop yesterday, and people were only saying, 'It's cold, so cold,' but well, winter is winter, so let's not exaggerate," Ewiergocka said. Rudenko and Manzhos reported from Ukraine; Biel from Poland. Contributing: Stanimir Vaglenov in Bulgaria; Blaz Zgaga in Slovenia; Vlad Ursulean in Romania. |