PARIS: Icy temperatures plunged swathes of Europe into a second day of travel chaos on Tuesday, with weather-related accidents causing six deaths from the continent’s bitterest cold snap this winter so far.
Five of those deaths since the mercury dropped on Monday were in France alone, while a woman died in Bosnia as heavy snow and rain sparked floods and power outages across the Balkans.
Paris’s two airports, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly, were to cancel many flights early Wednesday to allow ground crews to clear snow from runways and de-ice planes. Forty percent of flights at Charles de Gaulle were to be scrapped, and 25 percent at Orly.
In Britain, the mercury plunged to -12.5C overnight Monday-Tuesday in Norfolk, eastern England, while temperatures below -10C across the Netherlands brought trains to a standstill on Tuesday morning.
“Last night was the coldest night of the winter so far,” Britain’s Met Office said, with nearly all of the United Kingdom on alert for snow and ice and more snowfall expected.
With the chill making roads perilous, three people died in accidents linked to black ice in southwestern France on Monday morning, authorities said, while a taxi driver died in hospital on Monday night after veering into the Marne river in the Paris region.
His passenger was still being treated for hypothermia, according to a police source. Another driver also lost his life east of Paris on Monday after a collision with a heavy goods vehicle. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the Netherlands’ main flight hub, meanwhile saw a second day of weather-driven cancellations Tuesday, with more than 400 flights grounded and travellers facing huge queues at the airline counters.
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