RIGA - Mother nature stung the Baltic with an artic wind this week, with temperatures falling as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius.
The cold streak began on Jan. 18, and is expected to last until Jan. 28. At least 10 people have died from the cold in Latvia, and nearly as many in Estonia and Lithuania - mostly the homeless and elderly. Many schools and kiosks have been shut down due to the cold weather, and experts are warning people to stay inside unless necessary. The body of a middle-aged man was found in a garage in the southern city of Tartu on Jan. 18. Tentative information suggests that the man froze to death, spokespeople for Tartu police told the Baltic News Service.
Two days later, an emergency team found the body of a man in a warehouse in Tallinn who had frozen to death. And then on Jan. 21, a woman born in 1961 was found dead in an abandoned house in Tallinn.
On Jan. 18, a man taking part in an Orthodox cross procession in Narva died after pouring cold water over himself. Some 50 believers headed to the Narva River where a ritual sprinkling of water took place. Two men, however, undressed and began to pour ice-cold river water from buckets over themselves in the freezing cold, police said. The older one of them collapsed after the procedure and died.
Police say they have managed to save quite a few lives by taking people vulnerable to the harsh weather off the streets in Ida-Viru County, Tartu and Tallinn. Doctors were working hard to save the frozen hands and feet of a 51-year-old man hospitalized in drunken condition in Tartu on Saturday.
In Telsiai, northern Lithuania, hundreds are bracing the cold weather without heating. Workers were forced to cut heating in 27 apartment buildings last week, after radiators and heating stands cracked, said Litesko, a company that has been working for three days to eliminate the malfunction in the city's heating system.
The residents of two apartment buildings and a nursing home were evacuated due to the incident 's the largest energy accident in the past week. On Jan. 19, temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero in Telsiai, with about two thirds of the population left without centralized heating since. By Jan. 22, however, heating was supplied to more than 50 percent of residents' housholds.
People across the Baltics are taking various measures to warm themselves up -- some are buying larger quantities of strong alcoholic beverages, while others are sweeping wool blankets and honey-jars off store shelves.
The large shopping centres have noticed that sales of certain goods have boosted: Viktorija Jakubauskaite, a spokesperson for the retail chain operator VP Market told the Baltic Times that shoppers were sweeping wool bedclothes, heating appliances and items to help cars start in cold weather off the shelves.
Darius Ryliskis, a media representative of the retail chain Norfos Mazmena, added that stores had observed a significant boost in the sales of alcoholic beverages.
"There are no statistics available yet, but we can see that the consumption of the strong liquors has gone up. Consumption of beer has dropped, some suppliers even refuse to deliver beer fearing it might freeze solid," he said.
In the meantime, sales of honey, lemons, tea have increased in the stores of the Iki chain.
In Latvia, even though the temperatures have risen a little, classrooms are still half-empty, reported the Riga City Council education, youth and sports department.
This can be explained by the fact that the air temperature varied across the city. While in some locations it was minus 22 degrees Celcius or below, in other locations it was minus19 degrees.
Children are not required to attend school at temperatures 20 degrees below zero. In particular this refers to pupils in the countryside, who have to travel over considerable distances to get to school.
The lowest temperature recorded in Latvia on Jan. 23 was in the eastern town of Zoseni, where it was negative 28 degrees. Rezekne, also in eastern Latvia, was minus 27 degrees, and it was negative 22 degrees in Riga.
Weathermen promise relief from the current spell of extremely cold weather in the coming days.
