London, Dec 2 (IANS) Many parts of Britain came to a standstill Thursday as heavy snow created chaos on roads, rails and airports, disrupting the travel plans of over 250,000 people.
London’s Gatwick airport, Britain’s second largest, will remain closed till at least 6 a.m. Friday.
‘We are doing everything we can to resume operations. However, conditions have deteriorated considerably. Our teams are working round the clock to make the runway safe for aircraft to use and get our airlines and passengers flying again,’ a spokesman for Gatwick was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Train companies were struggling to cope with the conditions. Most of the services were suspended, while 300 passengers were stranded overnight on a train at the Three Bridges station in Sussex.
Railway services have advised commuters to consider whether they needed to travel.
Eurostar, a high-speed passenger train connecting London, Paris and Brussels, said it was running a ‘significantly reduced timetable’, and delays of 90 minutes were affecting services because of snow in Kent and France. No tickets were available for services until Monday.
On the roads, police in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Essex were warning against non-essential journeys.
Mountain rescue teams were called in to rescue drivers stranded for a second night on a highway between Todwick in south Yorkshire and Worksop in Nottinghamshire.
Inspector Paul Sellwood of the Kent road policing unit, said: ‘The driving conditions across the county are extremely dangerous, and many roads are impassable due to snow.’
In Scotland, temperatures fell to -18.6 degree Celsius in the Scottish Highlands.
The British government ordered an urgent review of the country’s snow readiness.
In the House of Commons, shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle asked why the findings of a previous review into snow chaos had not been implemented.
She said the current problems were costing the economy up to 1.2 billion pounds a day.
However, the Met office said an end to the protracted cold snap could be in sight.
Forecaster David Price said: ‘Showers will be pushing in from the northeast coast and across England all the way through to the east coast.’
He predicted a fine day Friday, with snow showers confined to coastal regions. Temperatures were expected to rise slightly towards the weekend.
