Local authorities ask for state of emergency in two snow-bound counties in Romania

Local authorities in the Romanian counties Buzau and Vrancea, which have been massively hit by the snow and blizzard, have asked the central authorities in the country to declare the state of emergency in these two counties. People have been trapped inside their houses in tens of villages in these counties, where it snowed heavily most of this week. Authorities have slowly started to reach some villages and media has brought to attention desperate cases of people who live in unheated homes, have no water, no access to roads, nor electricity or food. People face difficulties in four other counties, and media reports suggest 90,000 people are snow-bound across these regions on South and South - East Romania.

After a couple of day when most of the discussion evolved around the new Government and the political scene, the newly voted Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu announced he will go to the affected areas on Saturday morning (February 11). The former Minister of Transport Anca Boagiu however blamed the Weather Administration in the country. Boagiu, who handed over the helm of the ministry to Alexandru Nazare, said the ministry didn't receive weather alerts in due time, in order to stop traffic on national roads. However, most roads in the two counties were closed down when the blizzard had started, as the authorities had been waiting for a Code Orange for blizzard at the beginning of this week. Local authorities in Vrancea county asked for instating a state of emergency in the county as early as Tuesday this week (February 8 ), as most major roads were still closed on Wednesday morning and over 30 villages were under power outages. Marisan Oprisan, the president of the Vrancea County Council said that people don’t have access to food and medicine, while there were also problems in water supply and even in communicating with people in many of the areas in distress. He asked the authorities to investigate the abuse done by the the Highways and Roads Authority in Romania (CNADNR), which has not done anything to clear the national roads in the county in the last six days, while quoting the Code Orange for their lack of intervention. Central Authorities are currently quarreling whether the demand for instating a state of emergency was submitted respecting all legal procedures. Oprisan said the only response he got so far was from Prime Minister Ungureanu, five days after he had requested the state of emergency using all needed means of communication with central authorities. 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. The bad weather hit Romania almost two weeks ago, when it started snowing heavily and temperatures reached dropped to record lows. Villages in several counties in the country, such as Buzau, Vrancea, Galati and Braila were isolated and under power outages. A total of 48 national roads and highways have been closed and 16 roads have traffic restrictions. Moreover, 184 trains were canceled, and three ports were closed, namely Midia, Mangalia and Constanta.