Storms cause devastating damage throughout the region, snowdrifts also paralyze highways and trains stop.
Tens of thousands of households in Bosnia and Herzegovina were without power after heavy snowfall and winds caused traffic chaos in neighboring Croatia and Serbia.
“Despite efforts and continuous work to resolve the disruptions, the power supply situation deteriorated. There are currently 127,000 measuring points without power,” said distributor Elektroprivreda BiH on Tuesday.
Elektrokrajina, which includes the municipalities of Bosnia’s Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, also announced that about 50,000 of its users are without electricity.
“All available field teams are deployed and have been working since the early hours of the morning to resolve the disruption,” the company said.
A state of emergency was declared in western Bosnia after severe weather blocked all entry and exit points to the municipality of Drvar and cut off its 17,000 residents.
“The situation is extremely difficult. The snow continues to fall. “People are stranded in the snow,” Drvar Municipal Council President Jasna Pecanac told local media.
Across the Balkans, authorities issued travel warnings as some key routes were closed due to snowdrifts. Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia have banned the movement of heavy vehicles and restricted traffic on the affected roads.
In some villages around Drvar, snowdrifts were up to two meters high and the heavy snowstorm made clearance work difficult. “We ask for help with snow removal. All available machines are already in use,” said Pecanac.
Due to heavy snowfall, classes were canceled in primary schools in Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the administrative center of Republika Srpska.
A day earlier, classes were also postponed in around 70 primary and high schools in the Una-Sana canton in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Rail traffic also came to a complete standstill in parts of Bosnia. The country’s state-owned energy provider described the situation in some parts of the country as “extremely difficult.” Heavy, wet snowfall caused difficult-to-reach distribution lines to collapse, a statement said.
Regional television N1 reported that dozens of vehicles were stuck in the snow in western Bosnia overnight for 10 hours before they were able to move on.
In Slovenia, the search for an injured Hungarian hiker missing since Sunday in the Alps north of the capital Ljubljana has been suspended due to strong winds. Rescuers reached his companion on Monday and brought her to safety.
In central Croatia, a mountain rescue team used skis early Tuesday to reach a man who was stuck in his car on the way to a hospital for dialysis. “We got him there in time,” said rescuer Dario Cindric.
