Moscow fell into the grip of Arctic cold today as abnormally low temperatures threatened to disrupt the city’s power supply and freeze people to death.
Two people have died of exposure and 14 more have been hospitalised after the coldest front in decades arrived in the city from Siberia late yesterday afternoon. During the night, temperatures fell as low as minus 28C (-18 F), rising slightly this morning to minus 23C (-9.4 F).
Meteorologists have warned Moscow that temperatures are likely to remain around minus 25C (-13F) until Friday. They could drop to minus 34C (-29.2F) in the coming days, the lowest since 1947. A total of 107 people are reported to have died in Moscow from the cold since October.
The bitter weather, ten degrees colder than the January average for the city, has been expected in Moscow since sweeping across eastern Russia last week. A state of emergency was declared in Western Siberia after temperatures in the city of Tomsk fell to minus 50C (-58F), the coldest for a century.
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In preparation for the onslaught, city authorities in Moscow have set up a “headquarters to counter the Siberian freeze”, filled buses with “Arctic diesel” fuel and told students to stay away from school, which will be suspended while temperatures are below minus 20C (-4F).
Traffic policemen have been invited to wear their varenki, felt boots, and homeless people, normally ejected into the streets at night, have been told they can make beds and shelters in train stations. Special dens are being built to protect the 6,000 animals at Moscow zoo, according to The Moscow Times.
There are widespread fears that the cold will damage decades-old heating systems and drive up the city’s energy demand beyond the capacity of Russia’s electricity monopoly, RAO Unified Energy System.
City officials quoted by the Interfax news agency said that electric billboards and building sites were likely to shut down during the freeze. Digging work has already been suspended of the threat to underground pipes.
Two independent newspapers lost power yesterday and the Moscow Stock Exchange stopped share trading at 2:00pm local time today because of fears that it might be cut off.
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NTV television reported today that power has already been cut off to nearly 30 towns and villages in the Ryazan region southwest of Moscow. As the cold front made its way across Siberia, it closed hospitals and prisons, kept pollution low in the freezing air and contributed to road accidents.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into what happened at a jail in Siberian village of Takhtamygda, where the heating system broke down and more than 800 inmates had rely on wood-burning stoves for more than a week.
Today, Unified Energy said there were no disruptions to supply in Moscow. But the company revealed that it had ranked its consumers according to “social importance’’ and would start cutting off energy if the cold snap persists.
Tatyana Milyaeva, a spokeswoman for the company told Bloomberg news that industrial consumers would be the first to lose power. Homes, hospitals, transport providers and military and defence installations would remain unaffected.
Moscow’s ability to withstand a burst of energy demand was first questioned last May when Unified Energy subjected the city to two days of rolling blackouts that closed the subways, disrupted water supplies and closed the stock market. President Vladimir Putin forced the company’s Moscow chief to resign as a result.
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In November, Anatoly Chubais, the head of Unified Energy and the former chief of staff to President Boris Yeltsin, added to the concern by saying that Moscow could not withstand more than three days of minus 20C (-4F) temperatures without affecting the electricity supply.