From Poland to France, Europe Battered by Severe Weather

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 ◆ From Poland to France, Europe Battered by Severe Weather

Heavy snowfalls together with violent gusts of wind paralysed road and rail links across Poland Wednesday and the country's air traffic was also severely hit with two major airports at Krakow in the south and at the Baltic port of Gdansk closed down. "Only one plane took off (from Krakow) during the morning and dozens of other flights were cancelled because of heavy side winds and snowstorms," an airport spokesman said. Several hundred villages in the northeast were cut off after wind created snowdrifts up to two meters (6.5 feet) high, public television reported. Soldiers were called out to rescue passengers trapped in about 30 vehicles near the northern city of Olsztyn, including snowplows that had earlier been sent out to clear the road. "All of the drivers and passengers were freed and were handed over to the police, who served them hot drinks," said a police spokesman. Heavy snow also made road travel nearly impossible in southern Poland, near the Tatra mountain range. Many cars abandoned on the road to Krakow from Zakopane could be seen completely covered by snow. Traffic on the highway between Krakow and Katowice moved at no more than 30 kilometers (19 miles) per hour after ice covered the pavement and wind blew snowdrifts across the road. Around 150 villages in the northeastern region of Warmie-Mazurie were without electricity after snow and high winds knocked down power lines in a winter which has already seen more than 200 deaths across the country caused by the cold weather. In the neighbouring Czech Republic, school was cancelled until Monday in what the private TV station Nova termed "snow holidays". To the west, many routes were impassable over the German border and icy conditions were responsible for a number of fatal road accidents particularly in the eastern region of Moravia, police announced. The cold front stretched as far north as the Latvian capital Riga where snow falls reached 40 centimeters (16 inches) and temperatures dropped below minus 20 degrees Centigrade (minus four degrees Fahrenheit). No snow removal trucks were seen on the city's streets by midday as efforts were being concentrated on highways. While most buses and trams appeared to be running, winds of 65 kilometers (40 miles) per hour shut down traffic at Riga's port from 7--00 am (0500 GMT). The national electricity utility Latvenergo issued a public appeal for children not to approach fallen electricity poles, with 37 transformer stations across the country reported out of service. Private snowplow drivers were looking to make the most of the situation, with local businessmen saying they had been asked to pay double the normal rates to get parking lots cleaned. In Bulgaria, as many continued with ski vacations during the end of year holiday period, around 200 tourists were stuck in two mountain hotels in the centre of the country following snow falls which began on Sunday, according to Bulgarian civil defence. Snow reached heights of 50 to 70 centimeters in certain parts of the country which has seen its heaviest falls in 30 years according to metereologists. Hundreds of kilometers (miles) to the west, as France entered its first full working day with the new single currency, the euro was also a casualty of the weather. Floods destroyed a stock of 180,000 euros (163,000 dollars) in the vault of a bank in Verdun, northeastern France, after the Meuse river broke its banks on Wednesday morning. The vault was under 1.5 metres (4.5 feet) of water and the euros had been seriously damaged and were now unusable, Francois Webre, manager of Verdun's Banque Populaire de Lorraine (BPL) said.