Fifty hour ordeal for 400 people on snow stricken Romanian train

Around 400 people suffered a 50 hour ordeal, trapped aboard a Galati - Bucharest train after it got stuck in the snow. Today ( February 8 ), at around 13:00, the train finally left Faurei train station, to return to Galati. “People received food and water yesterday and today. We made an appeal to the local authorities because we couldn’t get there due to the deep snow, but people received food and water. At the moment, the train is on its way back to Galati,” said Adrian Vlaicu, CFR Calatori’s spokesman, quoted by Mediafax newswire. A state of emergency was declared in Vrancea county, one of the counties among the worst hit by the bad weather, following an appeal from local authorities to the government. Most major roads were still closed on Wednesday morning ( February 8 ) and over 30 villages were under power outages. The heavy snow that fell in Romania in recent days closed national roads and highways, stopped trains, and closed ports. The meteorologists issued a Code Yellow for ice for the entire country, from Wednesday ( February 8 ) until Sunday ( February 12 ). The minimum temperatures in this period will generally be between minus 25 and minus 15 °C, while during the day the temperatures will remain below freezing. Read more about the bad weather in Romania here. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com (photo source: Sxc.hu)