Winter in Belgium. Hundreds of tons of salt and 1,500 kilometers of traffic jams

Snowfall paralyzed large parts of Belgium on Wednesday. According to local media, in the evening there were traffic jams with a total length of over 1,500 kilometers. The weather dangers are not over – according to the forecasts of the national meteorological institute KMI, heavy snowfall will continue locally until 6 p.m. on Thursday. Slippery surfaces are also a major problem – this will be a problem for residents of almost the entire country throughout the morning.

According to local media, in Wallonia, in the south of the country, there were practically no public buses running on Saturday evening. In the province of Luxembourg, a red danger code was in force during the day, and a traffic ban was introduced for heavy goods vehicles longer than 13 meters. The situation was also difficult in the province of Limburg in northern Belgium, as well as in Brussels itself, where some tunnels were closed for some time.

On Thursday morning, the road maintenance agency AWV reported that gritters and other winter maintenance vehicles were working on roads across the country at night. It is estimated that approximately 300 tons of salt and brine were used to clean the road.

The weather affected more than just road traffic. Due to heavy snowfall, traffic at the capital’s Zaventem airport was partially suspended around 3 p.m. In the evening, some flights were canceled and some departed with delays.

Railway traffic was suspended for about 20 minutes near Vilvoorde in the northern part of the country. As reported by the daily “Het Laatste Nieuws”, it was due to the fact that the driver of one of the trains thought he had hit someone on the tracks. Ultimately, it turned out that the perpetrators of the commotion were young people who hit one of them against the windshield of the train during a snowball fight.