MADRID (AP) – The Spanish capital, Madrid, was still trying to recover on Monday after a record 50-year blizzard that paralyzed much of central Spain and prevented the delivery of vaccines against the coronavirus.
The blizzard poured more than 50 centimeters (20 inches) of snow in some areas and a cold front was turning the fluffy snow into layers of ice and piles of crust. At least 700 roads were not yet clear enough to drive without chains.
Temperatures are expected to drop to minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) in a large area of the country on Monday, according to the national weather agency AEMET, prompting authorities to urge people to be cautious.
“We have very complicated days ahead of us until the cold wave passes,” Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said at a televised news conference. “It is necessary to postpone any movement that is avoidable, for safety and not to interrupt the works of the road network.”
A new batch of 350,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine that Spain hoped reached half a dozen airports on Monday, but the doses destined for Madrid had to be diverted to the city of Vitória.
The central government representative in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, told Radio Onda Cero that the pharmaceutical company is working hard to ensure that doses of the capital arrive on the ground at a logistics center. Authorities said earlier that police escorts would help vaccines get through snow-clogged streets and highways.
In Madrid, civil protection and military battalions, assisted by snowplows and bulldozers, managed to clear the roads for ambulances and emergency vehicles. Even so, most of the city’s main services remained closed on Monday, including the main wholesale market, although some supermarkets and newsstands opened for the first time in three days.
Residents, some with staples and hiking poles, cautiously tried to walk in the icy snow before disappearing into the subway stations.
The underground train system became the only viable way to get to work, leading to scenes of overcrowding in train cars where maintaining social distance was impossible. Urban trains in Madrid and the high-speed rail between Barcelona and Madrid will resume on Monday, said national railway company Renfe.
The airport, which had been closed since Friday night, had a dozen flights taking off or landing on Monday and hopes to go into full operation.
Schools were closed on Monday in the regions of Castilla La Mancha, Madrid and many other areas.
The Filomena storm left four dead and arrested more than 1,500 people in their vehicles, some of them for up to 24 hours. Since then, he moved east.