Icy rain and German earthquake add to Christmas transport misery

Dec 23, 2010, 12:39 GMT

Berlin - A slight let-up in Europe's bitter cold triggered fresh pre-Christmas transport chaos Thursday, with icy roads quickly glazing over in many parts of Germany as rain fell on frozen ground.

Adding to the sense of disaster was a minor earthquake in the region just west of Frankfurt. High buildings swayed in two big jolts under the city of Mainz, but nobody was injured. The bigger quake, at 3 am (0200 GMT), measured 3.4 on the Richter scale, a state seismologist said.

In the far north of Germany, heavy new falls of snow hampered road travel. Elsewhere, the new precipitation came down in the form of rain, causing even worse dangers. The rain froze into a slippery sheet on already-frozen roadways.

Parts of the main highways from Berlin to Hamburg and to Germany's industrial heartland in the west were closed when trucks jack-knifed on the ice. Authorities appealed to motorists to only use their cars in dire necessity.

But the plea fell on deaf ears, with many Germans heading back to their hometowns to spend Christmas with parents and grandparents.

Travellers complained of huge overcrowding on German trains. Many were running late because of snow on tracks.

'We have every available train in use today,' a spokesman for the Deutsche Bahn rail company said.

In Dusseldorf, a city bus crashed into parked cars and collided with a tree, injuring the driver and passengers. But police said the cause was a blackout by the driver, not a skid.

Frankfurt Airport said its operations were getting back to normal after days of delays caused by snow on runways, the extra work of de- icing aircraft wings and Europe-wide timetable disruptions.

'We hope we can manage 90 per cent of a normal day's work today,' an airport spokesman said.

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