Radio România Internațional

Tag: severe

Bad weather hits Romania

This past weekend Romania was affected by severe weather. In the mountain areas in the centre and north-east, massive snowfalls were reported, resulting in a significant layer of snow; in the south-east however, especially in Dobrogea and on the seacoast, mixed precipitation was reported, while the wind reached speeds as high as 100 km per hour.

A total 52 localities in 16 counties were affected by the bad weather, the General Inspectorate for Emergencies Announced. In the counties of Neamţ, Suceava and Vaslui, in the north-east of the country, snowfalls and snowstorms led to the closing of several roads, and the blizzards caused blackouts in several towns and villages.

In the south-east, the wind was the main problem. On Saturday, Unit 1 of the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant got automatically disconnected from the national power system, and a number of wind turbines stopped working. The Nuclearelectrica National Corporation announced that, as a result of disruptions, the plant produced nearly 1,700 MW less than under usual circumstances.

The lower electricity output and the damage caused by the wind led to blackouts in scores of places. On Sunday afternoon, around 40,000 consumers in 80 localities in Dobrogea were left without electricity, according to the supplier. Meanwhile, power has been restored for close to 93% of the affected users. The Cernavodă Unit 1 was also re-synched with the national power grid, and has been operating at maximum capacity since Monday morning.

A special situation was reported in the city of Constanţa. Romanias largest Black Sea port was hit by a serious storm on Saturday night. The wind, blowing at over 100 km/h, tore down roofs, trees, street light posts and electricity poles, and damaged tens of vehicles. In the Tomis Marina, several boats were also damaged, and some of them sank at the pier.

After this weekends severe weather spell, the National Meteorology Agency forecasts rising temperatures in most of the country, and especially in the south-west and the south, where they would go above the average for this period. Clouds will linger in the northern half of the country, with rainfalls expected in Maramureş, Moldavia, Transylvania, and in small parts of Crișana and Banat. In the mountains, mixed precipitation is forecast. The wind has slowed down, with occasional gusts at high altitudes. (AMP)

20 November 2023
April 26, 2022

LAW In Bucharest, the Offshore Bill is to be
discussed this week by the specialised committee of the Senate, the first
parliamentary chamber to vote on the act. The bill regulates the development of
the natural gas reserves in the Black Sea, and stipulates that the Romanian
state has pre-emptive rights to purchase these resources. The Senate is still
waiting for the official opinion of the Economic and Social Council before
discussing the bill, for which the leaders of the ruling coalition have taken
responsibility. The Senate’s vote is expected to take place in May.

REFUGEES The Romanian Border Police announced that
the number of Ukrainian nationals that entered the country on Monday was 38.3%
higher than on the previous day. According to a news release, 4,412 Ukrainian
citizens entered Romania in 24 hours. Since the start of the crisis, over
786,000

Ukrainian citizens have crossed the border into Romania. According to the
Border Police, measures have been taken to reinforce border security.

HEALTH According to the latest official data, 321
COVID-19 cases and 1 related fatality were reported in Romania in the past 24
hours. More than 1,200 patients are currently in hospitals, 221 of them in
intensive care. In other news, one case of acute severe hepatitis was reported
in Romania, in a 5 year old. On April 21, the WHO announced 169 cases of acute
hepatitis of unknown origin among young children worldwide. At least one child
died and 17 needed liver transplants, the institution said.

MOLDOVA The president of
the ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, has called for a meeting of the Supreme
Security Council concerning the recent incidents in the pro-Russian separatist
region of Transnistria, in the east of that country. Two blasts were reported today in Maiak, where
two communication towers in the radio and television centre were blown up. No
victims have been reported. On Monday, the headquarters of the Security Service
in Tiraspol had been attacked with rocket launchers, and a shell was found near
the building. The doors and windows of the office were broken, and so were the
windows of nearby buildings. According to
Moldova’s Reintegration Policy Bureau, the goal
was to create tension in the region, which has been out of the Moldovan
authorities’ control since 1992, when an armed conflict that had killed
hundreds of locals was ended by the intervention of Russian troops supporting the secessionist rebels, less than a year after Chișinău had
proclaimed its independence. The ex-president of Russia Boris Yeltsin promised
to pull out the troops from Transnistria at the 1999 OSCE summit, but some 1,500
military and substantial amounts of Russian weapons appear to still be there.

UKRAINE In its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has
increased attacks on civilian targets, particularly railways, to prevent
Ukrainian forces from receiving weapons from the West. At least 5 civilians
were killed. Russian troops also destroyed 6 electricity generating units of
the Ukrainian railways, and a weapons storage facility in Slovyansk. The
Ukrainian forces withstood the attacks and said victims were reported, but did
not provide any details.

AID NATO and EU foreign
ministers convene today at the Ramstein US military base in Germany, to discuss
additional military assistance for Ukraine. At the beginning of the conflict,
the West hesitated to provide weapons to Ukraine for fear that the violence
would spiral into a larger-scale war. This reluctance subsided, however, and
today’s talks will focus on how Kyiv could be supplied with the necessary
weapons not just to withstand the Russian attack in Donbas (east), but also to
counter-attack. Previously, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO
of involvement in a proxy war, and said the weapons delivered by the West to
Ukraine will be legitimate targets. (AMP)

26 April 2022
Black day for Romania’s fight against COVID-19

Tuesday was another black day for Romania’s efforts to
contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The authorities announced nearly 17,000 new
cases of Sars-CoV-2, 442 Covid-related deaths in 24 hours and around 1,700 patients
in severe condition.

The total number of infections since the onset of the
pandemic thus reached 1.4 million, and the number of fatalities is now over 40,000.

The situation is dire, dr. Adrian Marinescu with Bucharest’s
Matei Balş Institute of Infectious Diseases admits. He says Romania’s topping
the EU and world statistics by number of deaths among COVID-19 patients and the
healthcare system overwhelmed by the large number of cases are the consequences
of the very low vaccination rate.

Adrian Marinescu: I’ll make this very clear. There
is no country in the world with extensive vaccination rates, at 70 – 80%, where
things are not okay in terms of the number of hospitalised patients, of severe
forms of the disease, of ICU patients. What we see in Romania is,
unfortunately, in direct relation to this low vaccination rate. Statistics
translate into reality, and I can tell you that in intensive care units, 94 -
95% of the patients in critical condition are not vaccinated.

The physician also said, in a specialised conference, that
this month is expected to be very difficult as regards the healthcare crisis,
but the situation will likely improve after that.

In turn, the head of the National Coordination Committee
for COVID-19 Vaccination, Valeriu Gheorghiţă, says prevention programmes are
needed in Romania, and health education should begin in the early school years,
so as to ensure that citizens perceive vaccination as a normal act of
protection against diseases.

So far, Romania has received over 20 million doses of anti-COVID
vaccines, and only little over half of them have been used. According to
official data, at present the COVID vaccine coverage among people over 12 years
of age is around 34%.

In an effort to increase this rate, which is substantially
smaller than in other EU countries, the head of the vaccination programme
announced that a new anti-COVID vaccination marathon is being planned in the
capital city.

In the current context, the education system is once
again one of the most severely affected. The interim education minister Sorin
Cîmpeanu urged schools to identify the best solutions to benefit students. By Tuesday,
the Bucharest City’s School Inspectorate had received over 100 requests from
schools to suspend face-to-face teaching. (tr. A.M. Popescu)

13 October 2021
Severe drought in Romania

In 2015, Romania was launching a programme to revamp its old irrigation system. It was an ambitious 5-year programme targeting a total surface area of around 2 million hectares by the end of 2020.

However, at present only about 850,000 hectares are irrigable, and the programme was extended several years. In other words, only 10% of the countrys total farm area can be irrigated.

Even so, farmers have only filed applications for around 100,000 hectares, says the line minister Adrian Oros. The situation is dramatic, because although Romania takes pride in its fertile land, its agriculture continues to rely heavily on the weather.

And it has hardly rained at all in Romania over the past few months, there was little to no snow during the winter, and the consequences are increasingly evident.

According to centralised data, in April we had 7 litres of precipitation per square metre, as opposed to an average of 53 litres.

In short, Romania is facing a drought described by Minister Adrian Oros as “strong and extreme, as we havent seen in recent years.

The worst situation in reported in Dobrogea, Bărăgan and Moldavia, that is in the south-east, south and east of the country. Here is how Nicolae Moraru, the mayor of a village in the east, describes the situation:

Nicolae Moraru: “There are farmers in difficult positions, who own 400 – 500 hectares each and incur substantial expenses. They are threatened by bankruptcy. They have used their land, property, homes as collaterals. The situation is disastrous in our region.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, 3 million hectares under crops since autumn are already destroyed. The rape, wheat, rye and barley crops are the most affected. Many farmers already warn that bread will be more expensive this autumn, although authorities argue that it is too soon to tell.

In an interview to a private TV channel, minister Adrian Oros explained that even if half of the crops were destroyed, the domestic demand would still be covered:

Adrian Oros: “It is much too soon. What happens in Europe and in the rest of the world is also important. During the good years, when it rained enough, Romanias wheat yield was 7, 8 or even 9 million tons of wheat, and we only use around 2 and a half to 3 million tons. The same for maize, the yield was 14-15 million tons, and the maximum demand in Romania is 7 million tons. So even if half the crops were destroyed, the domestic demand would still be covered.

Weather experts bring us a piece of good news: on Friday they expect rain across the country. But the precipitation amount is not likely to be very large—an average of 10 litres per square metre.

(translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

27 April 2020