A massive blizzard and harsh winter weather have claimed at least five lives and kept Bulgaria paralyzed under a blanket of ice, local media reported Saturday, according to dpa. A state of emergency remained in effect in eight municipalities in the hardest-hit northern part of the Balkan country, as the cold and wind prevented normalization of traffic and power supply. Temperatures plummeted to as low as minus 32 degrees celsius, in Zevlyevo in central Bulgaria. In Sofia it was 17 below zero. Apart from the five weather-related deaths, one woman was still missing in central Bulgaria. A 30-hour blizzard in the middle of the week had deposited drifts of snow up to three metres high. Gale-force winds have since continued piling new drifts as soon as road-clearing crews remove them. The storm also kept the airport in Varna, on the Black Sea coast, closed. A group of 70 tourists, among them 20 children, locked in by snow since January 1 was finally rescued from a chalet in the Balkan mountains when military machinery reached them. It was as cold north across the border, in Romania, but the blizzard and the cold crisis was apparently better managed there than in Bulgaria, where the authorities came under fire over their handling of the situation. The traditionally coldest spot in Romania, Miercurea Ciuc in the central Carpathian mountains, recorded minus 27 degrees - frosty, but still well off the all-time low of 38.4 degrees below zero. Snowdrifts nevertheless on Saturday kept some sections of the road network closed, including a part of the Bucharest-Black Sea highway.
