Moscow Braves Worst Cold Spell in 25 Years; 48 Deaths Reported

With the temperature plunging to nearly 40 below zero Fahrenheit, Moscow is experiencing its worst cold spell in more than a quarter of a century.

Frost has turned drab streets and parks into a winter wonderland. A white fog hangs over the Moscow River, and at times the city seems shrouded in mist.

The cold has caused widespread suffering. According to the newspaper Izvestia, 48 people died in weather-related incidents in the first week of the new year, most of them as the result of fires touched off by efforts to keep warm.

Cars refuse to start, trolley wires snap, children on school holidays must stay indoors, and outdoor work has to be done in short bursts between warming breaks.

Insouciant Reply

Even so, Muscovites generally shrug off the temperature, which for most of the week has ranged between 15 below and 38 below. The record low for Moscow, set in 1940, is 45 below.

“It’s cold--so what?” a young woman said to a reporter who asked how she felt about the weather.

Some people even prefer the cold to the slush and dirt that accompany a winter thaw here. But weather forecasters say there is little chance of a thaw. The extreme cold is expected to continue through the weekend, with no warming trend until Monday at the earliest.

Anatoly Yakovlev, the weather expert on the main evening television news program, said the extreme cold will extend across most of the country. In the Moscow area, he said, the temperature will fall to 39 below at night and rise to only 15 below in the daytime.

Sense of Crisis

Although everyday life goes on, there is a sense of crisis at Moscow’s City Hall, where some officials are sleeping in their offices so that they can deal with emergencies.

Fuel oil is being rushed to the capital on an urgent basis to supply the central heating systems for apartment and office buildings. Fuel consumption has shot up from 15,900 tons a day to almost double that figure, an official said.

If the temperature does not get above 13 below for an entire week, the official said, heating systems may not be able to keep apartments warm enough.

On the transportation front, many buses have been sidelined with frozen hydraulic systems or cold-weakened batteries.

“The situation is grave indeed, but generally we are coping,” said A. Ulyanov, head of the Moscow Public Transport Agency.

Subway Refuge

On the street, people scurry into subway stations to get warm or huddle together waiting for buses. Children are bundled up to their eyebrows, and even hardened traffic police officers have put down the ear flaps on their fur hats.

Moscow’s few joggers have given up for the time being, and the zoo, normally crowded at this time of year because of school holidays, is almost deserted. The animals are staying inside.

It is even too cold for ice skating and cross-country skiing, which are favorite winter pastimes here. People have continued to show up, though, at the world’s largest outdoor swimming pool. The water--but not the air--is heated.

At the U.S. Embassy, bursting radiator pipes in several offices have created a mini-crisis. Reporters wore their overcoats to a briefing Friday with Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman in a room where the heating system had failed. The ambassador just draped a muffler around his neck.

Generous Cab Drivers

Car owners have been inventive in thinking up ways to start their engines. Building custodians are offering to connect battery chargers to inside electrical outlets, and taxi drivers are generous about giving jump starts to stranded motorists. Some people are taking their batteries indoors overnight so they will be warm enough to provide power in the morning.

One veteran Moscow driver recalled that he was working on a construction site in 1940 when the temperature hit the record 45 below.

“Work didn’t stop then,” he said. “Cars and people continued to work, just as we do today. Of course the cold is a problem, but we have no choice but to live with it.”