The winter storm paralyzed the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, England: Three people died, canceled flights, rail traffic ...

Storm sprang trees, people flew, trucks pulled from the road, hundreds of flights canceled

Strong winds hit northern Europe and the wider region Thursday, breaking air and rail links. Three people were killed under collapsed trees. The Netherlands suffered a great winter storm - the second month - while the winds from the North Sea crashed all over the earth at a low altitude. The Amsterdam Aerodrome Sciphol, one of the busiest European airports, was forced to cancel all flights for a while, as winds of speeds up to 140 kilometers per hour crashed into some regions.

- Due to heavy winter conditions, all air traffic has been interrupted - says the Sciphol airport in a tweet. Flight departures and arrivals were gradually resumed two hours later.

The airport also had to close the entrances to two of the three departure terminals after the wind took off the roofs from the terminal building.

"Firefighters are here to help and assist people because the situation is not safe," Gedi Schrijzer, a spokeswoman for AFP, said, adding that there were no injured people. While the National Weather Service raised a storm warning to the highest red level, a 62-year-old was killed in the central Dutch town of Olst under a fallen tree. Another Dutchman, also a 62-year-old, died in the eastern city of Enschede when a tree fell on his car, the ANP Dutch news agency reported.

In neighboring Belgium, one woman also died when her car had fallen as she traveled through the Grez-Doice forest region, about 35 kilometers south of Brussels. The Dutch national rail company NS announced that "due to a storm, all railroad traffic was interrupted until further notice" except for smaller local moves in northern Groningen and southern Limburg. Thalys, the rail freight service, interrupted the traffic in the Netherlands and Germany during the morning hours.

One Thalys road to the Netherlands from Brussels was stopped in Antwerp and all passengers were told to land and wait for at least two hours, an AFP journalist from Antwerp said. NS reported that it faces "a large number of interruptions", meaning that even after the storm, it will take time for the reconstruction of the railway traffic. It is expected that strong winds will be released late in the afternoon, but Dutch officials have closed the traffic on all roads stormed.

Several flights have also been canceled at German airports in the western city of Dusseldorf and southern Munich, while the Deutsche Bahn Deutsche Bahn reported that it has reduced the speed of super-heavy ICE trains between the northern city of Wolfsburg and the capital of Berlin. In other European countries, the federal state of Tyrol, in western Austria, said the Westbahn rail linking Vienna, Linz and Salzburg was closed on Thursday morning due to avalanche risk.

• 18 Jan, 2018
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