On Monday, Belgraders again faced problems in public traffic after heavy snow on Sunday blocked busses, private vehicles and caused over 300 trees to fall on roadways and a power outage hit power outage leaving over 90,000 people without electricity.
Since Sunday, the power outage hit Belgrade’s Obrenovac municipality with over 70,000 population. The blackout caused heating problems, and on Monday, the schools there remained closed.
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The reason was the failure of coal supplies to reach Serbia largest thermal power plant TPP Nikola Tesla is located on the outskirts of the municipality.
Also, Zivko Babovic, head of the Emergency Sector Risk Management Directorate, said over 90,000 consumers did not have electricity, mainly due to snow. The most challenging situation with a severe problem with the power supply was in Zlatibor, Macva and Kolubara districts.
Milos Damjanovic, the head of the Operational Control Center for Public Transport, told N1’s morning programme on Monday that public transport in Belgrade regularly operated except on 13 city routes, where it was changed either due to snowfall or trees that fell on the road.
The weather forecast announced intense snow days ahead Sunday, and Belgrade authorities said they were ready for it.
Damjanovic said the public traffic towards some districts did not function on Monday morning, promising it would be restored during the day.
He added the snow was heavy, so the trees were leaning over the roads, and the broken tree branches blocked traffic.
Many busses could not move along the roads on Sunday due to uncleaned snow, including some with summer tires still on them.
Damjanovic said the traffic police were in charge of vehicles’ equipment and that his Secretariat was informed all were adequately prepared for the winter season, including appropriate tires.
He added there were 1,350 operational public transport vehicles and 260 more on suburban routes.
