EMERGENCY SERVICES and local authorities were stretched to breaking point last night as the heavy snow, icy conditions and lack of gritting salt to treat roads continued to wreak havoc in parts of Britain.
More than 5,000 schools were closed and some communities were largely cut off after local authorities began to ration salt strictly. The government said ministers were working with the Highways Authority and the Local Government Association to make sure salt was distributed effectively but the AA claimed untreated roads and pavements were turning into “death traps”.
In the House of Commons the opposition Conservatives called for a debate on how prepared the country was for severe snow and ice.
The leader of the house, Harriet Harman, said mayor of London Boris Johnson and other local authorities should take “full responsibility” for the failure of some local services.
Meanwhile, police in Cumbria revealed that two walkers had been found dead after setting off into the Lakeland fells, but two climbers in Scotland survived a “horrendous” night in the Cairngorms.
The Met Office warned that more snow was on the way. A swathe of central Britain, stretching from the southwest of England and Wales to East Anglia and perhaps into London and the southeast, is likely to be waking up to more falls this morning.
There may be a brief respite tomorrow but forecasters fear that another weather front could dump yet more snow on Britain on Sunday night.
The focus yesterday was on the state of the roads. In some parts of the country, more salt has been used to treat roads since Monday than in the whole of last year’s winter.
Across Britain, police were dealing with thousands of calls, with up to 15,000 just to report instances of snowballs being thrown in an aggressive or antisocial way. In London the Metropolitan police received one 999 call every four seconds at the peak of the chaos in the capital.
Many hundreds of extra cases were being treated at hospitals. The Bristol Royal Infirmary, for example, has treated 50 patients with ankle, wrist, knee or arm injuries since the snow began to fall.
Almost 300 schools were closed in Gloucestershire and more than 200 in Cambridgeshire. In the north and northeast of Scotland 270 schools were closed. All schools in Worcestershire and Powys, mid Wales, were shut.
– ( Guardianservice)