Image: Youtube, Frozen Flats in Siberia
An extended spell of extremely cold weather has resulted in widespread power outages across Siberia, according to the Moscow Times. Several people have died as a result.
“Towns and villages across Siberia have been hit by a succession of power outages as freezing temperatures grip much of the region, Russian media outlets reported Monday [December 11],” reports the Moscow Times. “Temperatures over the weekend fell to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius in the Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Tyumen regions, as well as the republics of Buryatia and Khakasia — all of them 2,500 kilometers or more east of Moscow.”
Power system failures were common.
“[R]esidents in a closed military town outside the city of Tyumen were left without heating for four days after a central heating system failure,” reported the Moscow Times. Thousands of people in the Krasnoyarsk region and the Irkutsk region also lacked power due to boilers and power plants failing during the extreme cold.
At least one person was reported to have died in the Krasnoyarsk region from inhaling smoke from a home diesel generator, and a second the Moscow Times story says that two elderly women were found frozen to death in unheated homes in St. Petersburg and central Russia’s Sverdlovsk region.