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'Snow white' born in Croatian village cut off by blizzard as toll from Europe cold snap crosses 300
A baby born in a Croatian village cut off by a blizzard has been named Snow White, an internet news site reported
- Agencies
- Published: 11:14 February 6, 2012
- Image Credit: AFP
- An unidentified Montenegrin woman clears a path through snow in the village of Medjurijecje, 40 kilometers north of capital Podgorica, on February 5, 2012. One person was found frozen to death in a village in Montenegro and many hamlets in the mountainous north were cut off from electricity and transportation. Rescuers managed to evacuate 120 people, among them 31 school children from neighboring Albania on a field trip, Interior Minister Ivan Brajovic said.
Zagreb: A baby born in a Croatian village cut off by a blizzard has been named Snow White, an internet news site reported.
Her mother, Marta Glavota, 30, called emergency services for help to deliver the baby, but snow, which has been falling since Thursday, closed off all access to her southern village of Vitusa Emergency services got to within four kilometres of the village before being forced back.
Advice over the phone
A doctor then called the pregnant woman and gave advice over the phone to two neighbours, who assisted in Sunday's birth of the black-haired girl Snjezana, meaning snow-white in Croatian. Both mother and daughter were doing well, Sata said.
The deadly cold snap that has gripped Europe for more than a week wrought more havoc across the continent, straining emergency services, grounding flights and pushing the death toll past 300. The homeless population has borne the brunt of the suffering, with dozens of transients freezing to death in unheated apartments, fire escapes or in makeshift street shelters.
Death toll over 306
French authorities on Sunday found the body of a homeless man who had frozen to death, bringing to at least 306 the number of cold-related deaths reported across Europe. With night-time temperatures plunging as low as minus 40 Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in Finland, the grim winter toll also rose in other countries.
Italy, Poland and Ukraine all recorded more deaths.
Ukraine announced another nine deaths, bring their total to 131 — most of them homeless people who perished on the streets since the freeze started nine days ago, Ukraine’s emergencies ministry said.
1,800 hospitalised
Some 1,800 people had been hospitalised, and 75,000 people had sought warmth and food in over 3,000 shelters across Ukraine.
The bitter cold front has engulfed much of Europe and even crossed the Mediterranean into north Africa, where as many as 16 people were killed on Algeria’s snow-slicked roads or in other weather-related accidents.
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