There are major problems in the region with the railways. Since Saturday night, the train station in Číčenice has been impassable due to snow, which is why traffic on the line connecting České Budějovice to Pilsen has been halted. Due to the snow, trains did not even run at Šumava local stations in České Budějovice, Černý Kříž and Strakonice, and between Tábor and Pelhřimov. According to ČT editor Pavel Schröter, trains from České Budějovice to Strachanice will not run until noon on Sunday.
Fallen trees disrupted traffic on two of the Czech Republic’s oldest electrified lines – between Rybnik and Libno and Tabor and Pečiny. In the afternoon, a tree fell on the road from České Budějovice to Austria, however, traffic was disrupted in the morning due to the amount of snow.
There was a lot of snow on the roads. “The biggest problems are in Pračadík, Český Krumlov, Českobudějovick and Jindřichohradeck. In Pračadík there is three quarters of a meter of snow, because the snow is heavy and wet, cracks are starting to appear. The snow continues to fall. It’s really a catastrophic situation,” said Andrea Jankovkova, director of road management and maintenance of the South Bohemian Region. said. On road II/163 near Dolní Dvořiště, road workers lost one of two hundred transmissions. Then the lorry that was following him hit him.
Road I/4 near Mirotic was closed for several hours after the accident. In the morning, the I/20 road near Maloviček, the main road from Budějovice to Písek and Pilsen, was unable to drive for two hours. Since this morning, the police have registered around 60 accidents, none of them serious. South Bohemian firefighters have had approximately three hundred interventions since the morning, said their spokesman, Viratislav Mali.
According to Jiri Kafka of JIKORD, a company that organizes public transport in the area, buses are running normally. “But you can say it’s not on schedule. Bus delays can be up to an hour,” he pointed out. Before 10:30 p.m., public transport will be available on all roads. According to him, the worst condition of the railways in the region at that time is at Sumawa near Wolar. There was over a meter of snow.
No current
There is also a problem with power supply. Trees that could not bear the weight of the snow fell not only on roads, railways but also on power lines. According to E.ON energy company spokesman Roman Šperňák, 1,500 customers were without power after eight in the evening. Šperňák believes that some of them will not be able to restore supply overnight. The situation is complicated by the limited availability of broken spaces. “These are faults in inaccessible terrain that are very difficult to navigate, even if they provide snow,” he described.
In the morning, according to him, 10,500 consumers were without electricity, mainly from South Bohemia, most of the places without electricity were in Českobudějovick and Prachatick. Disruptions in the afternoon are not as high as in the morning and at night, so the number of places without electricity is reduced, Šperňák said before three in the afternoon. In the morning, the company also dealt with outages in Pelhřimovské and South Moravia.
There are also problems in other regions. After snow on Saturday night and Saturday morning, CEZ reported up to 5,900 homes without power, the most in the Central Bohemia region, company spokeswoman Sona Holingarová said this morning. By 6:30 p.m., he said the number of places without power had dropped to 1,600 during the day. ČEZ has a total of 3.7 million take-off points. Pražská energetika, which provides electricity mainly in Prague, has not experienced any problems, said company spokesman Karel Hanselka.
Accidents halted both D1 and D5
Getting from Prague to Pilsen on a Saturday morning is quite complicated. This could not be done on highways or trains. However, the railway line was made passable. The problem was the ice switches at the station in Ejpovice, due to which traffic was completely stopped. The morning West Express from Pilsen to Prague, which left at five, was ultimately delayed an hour and a half, and the connection in the opposite direction was less than an hour late.
Problems lingered longer on the D5 highway, where the work of road crews and firefighters was almost Sisyphean. At night, it was first blocked by a truck accident, which happened near Ejpovice. Its effects were removed around three o’clock, but after about an hour, another truck crashed nearby – at the 62nd kilometer near Rokycan. The first accident stopped the D5 in the direction of Prague, the second in the direction of Rosvatov. In Rakhine, the highway is open for traffic as early as nine in the morning.
It doesn’t differentiate between Pilsen and Borders. As soon as it was possible to remove the consequences of the accident at the 140th kilometer near Katerina in the direction of Prague, the truck ran across the road at the 123rd kilometer near Bor in the direction of Rosvatov. Before 9:30 p.m., the vehicle was able to move without disrupting traffic, but about an hour later, the highway was closed again due to the tow. From 2pm onwards, the parking lane is accessible.
