GERMANS SHIVER IN BIG FREEZE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5299, 11 January 1947, Page 5

GERMANS SHIVER IN BIG FREEZE

(Press Assn.—

FACTORIES CLOSED grave-diggers use dynamite

-Rec. 9.30 p.m.)

LONDON, 'Jan. 10. The Berlin City Council met in the nnheated council chambers to-night to discuss the cold and the coal crisis., All big factories in Berlin are now.shut down owing to the coal shortage and 40,000 workers are idle. The British sector of the city had an electricity cut lasting 13 hours yesterday. More than 150 girls employed by the British Control Commission in Hamburg, who were evacuated from their frozen billets to a hotel yesterday, threaten to strike because they are still shivering in their new quarters. They are sleeping on couches with only c-ne.sheet and one blanket and'Jiad to sleep in their greatcoats and gloves. They even had to work in greatcoats in their offices. Hamburg gravediggers, after six more deaths from cold, reported in the last 24 ftours, had to dynamite the stiffened earth bef'ore they could dig graves. The latest deaths bring the total deaths from the cold in the last four days to an unofficial total of 24. A forecast of warmer weather in wustern Germany is welcome news | for the frozen population. Becaiise of the diffieulty of digging graves, the British have allocated extra coal to the crematoriums. Tlie autliorifcies, on the slxth day of the big freeze, faced the problem whether the few remaining means of transport should be used for carrying coal or food. The Rhine is completely closed to navigation, and the British announced that they would have to stop electricity exports to Belgium and Holland. | Troops are busy converting Haniburg's great flak tower and army barracks into warming balls where 1500 people will me'"tbawed out" at a time. Reuter's correspondent reports that in Greater Ilesse, in the American zone, Anierican troops had to bc ealled out to support the German police defending coal yards againsi ' would-be looters.