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Snow causes German travel woes
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January 31, 2010
Original URL: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Snow_causes_German_travel_woes



Heavy snow combined with high winds has caused at least three deaths,
with major travel disruption throughout much of Germany. Several
motorways were closed, with long traffic jams on many others. As flights
were delayed and rail travel cancelled, the police of North
Rhine-Westphalia recorded over three hundred accidents, with a total of
42 injured people, during Friday night and into Saturday, with one death
as a result of a man stepping out of his car and into the path of
another after a motorway accident.

Cars were abandoned, and even the gritters were stranded. In the north
of Germany, as much as 25cm of snow immobilised the transport network
whilst police and other emergency services struggled to cope. Football
matches have been cancelled across the entire nation, and ferry services
to the Baltic Sea islands cancelled, with at least one completely cut
off.

The Alster Lake in Hamburg froze over, prompting hundreds of citizens to
skate across it, in what meteorologists say happens just once a decade. 

== Sources ==

* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8489123.stm
* http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5195720,00.html
* http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100130-24923.html



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