Bad weather forced Georgia to close down highway system
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E-mail Xinhua, February 3, 2012
Strong winds overnight further plummeted temperature to freeze some parts of the snow-covered national highway system out of function as the Georgian road department on Thursday had to close down these parts to public traffic.
Most of the problematic road sections were pinpointed by the road department to be at mountainous areas, especially in road sections leading up to mountain passes along the Major Caucasus Range and the Liki Mountain Range in the South Caucasus country.
The Georgian Black Sea resort city of Batumi received its most intensive snowfall in 10 years as the city got 30 centimeters of snow over the past few days.
The Georgian prime minister on Thursday had to call a special meeting of the cabinet to discuss measures on dealing with the snow- and cold temperature-caused emergency.
Other sections of the Georgian highway system which were closed down temporarily included the Tbilisi-Bakurtsikhe-Sartichala, Mtskheta-Stefantsminda-Larsi, Gudauri-Kobi, and Stefantsminda- Larsi roads.
Anti-skid chains were checked upon for all types of vehicles negotiating near the mountainous highways in the country.
Snowfalls have been frequent and early this winter season in Georgia which had its earliest-among-11 years snowfall on Nov. 11 last year and the temperature kept falling due to continuous snowfalls and cold weather with temperature dipping below zero Celsius for days on end.
Other Black Sea countries experienced even colder winter spells. Ukraine had met its coldest winter temperature in six years at 33 degrees below zero while Bulgaria and Romania both had temperature at minus 30 degrees Celsius.
The poor weather conditions also caused power supply problems to some 3 percent of the Georgian population, according to the Georgian energy ministry.
The Georgian cabinet planned another emergency meeting for Friday to get the feedback on what could be effective on coping with the current situation.
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