Records shatter as arctic weather grips Europe
Scores reported dead due to killer cold; utilities stretched to limit



VIENNA, Austria, January 24, 2006 - Vienna’s subway tracks cracked, German authorities shut a key canal to ships after it iced up, and a zoo moved its penguins indoors Tuesday as a deadly deep freeze tightened its arctic grip on much of Europe.

The killer cold wave, which has been blamed for more than 50 deaths in Russia, claimed at least 13 lives in the past five days in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where authorities said another 30 people — many of them homeless — were hospitalized with hypothermia.

Romanian authorities reported 15 deaths in the past few days, five of them homeless people, after temperatures dropped as low as minus 22 degrees.

Parts of Austria felt more like Siberia, with the mercury plunging well below zero. The bitter cold hit an all-time low of minus 24 degrees in the Lower Austria town of Gross Gerungs, while in the beer-making town of Zwettl, it was minus 12 — the chilliest Jan. 24 since 1929.

Vienna’s subway system operator said morning rush-hour service was interrupted in some areas of the capital because the severe cold — which hit a low of minus 2 — caused small tears in the welds on sections of track.

Austria’s largest automobile club, OEAMTC, said it responded to hundreds of calls from motorists whose cars wouldn’t start because of dead batteries — along with dozens more from drivers who could not pry their way into their vehicles because the doors were frozen shut.

In southern Germany, officials closed the Rhine-Main-Danube canal to shipping for the first time in five years after it iced over.

Thick sheets of ice stretching about 50 miles posed a danger to ship propellers and lock systems, said Leonhard Hummel of the Office of Water and Navigation in Nuremberg. An icebreaker had to help six ships in the canal — which links waterway systems between the North Sea and the Black Sea — reach their destinations.

At the zoo in Dresden, Germany, 21 Humboldt penguins were moved from their minus 6 outdoor environment into a building where the temperature was a more comfortable 32 degrees to ensure their feet didn’t freeze, zoo director Karl Ukena said.