Repeated snowfall and freezing rain have coated the open-air insane asylum known as Berlin in a thin sheet of slippery ice since the beginning of January. To spare plants, city environmental laws have long forbidden using salt on pedestrian paths and stairways, and so residents have been falling and injuring themselves at such high rates that emergency rooms have had trouble keeping up:
Berlin’s emergency rooms are working flat out due to the icy conditions. At the BG Accident Hospital in Berlin, staff are “close to the limit,” press spokeswoman Angela Kijewski told Apollo News. On Thursday alone, there were 100 injuries due to slippery sidewalks and roads. These included bruises, broken bones and traumatic brain injuries. One patient has even suffered paraplegia.
As the press spokeswoman reported… in the last few days since the ice storm, staff have typically had to treat 50 to 70 patients a day who have been injured due to the slippery conditions. The hospital is responsible for work-related accidents and accidents on the way to work and is therefore prepared for large-scale emergencies – with the appropriate equipment and personnel. But even there, the slippery conditions are pushing them to their limits.
“Our surgeons are operating into the night,” Kijewski said. … Many of the patients require immediate surgery, while in other cases, fractures must first be immobilised with a cast and allowed to heal before further treatment can be given.
Kijewski urged Berliners to “attach spikes to their shoes for better grip”, because everybody has a few pairs of crampons just lying around, and she also amazingly suggested that residents try “walking like penguins” to avoid slipping.
For weeks, politicians have resisted relaxing their salt prohibition, despite the danger to life and limb. SPD “environmental expert” Linda Vierecke, for example, pronounced herself “sceptical” about any changes because the salt is bad for the trees. Somehow the extensive salt that the city already uses to de-ice motorways, other public transit routes and bike paths is okay though.
This morning, Berlin’s hapless Governing Mayor Kai Wegner appealed to the House of Representatives “to allow the use of de-icing salt in exceptional cases” to “alleviate the dangerous situation”. After everybody had a good laugh at Wegner for his impotent social media appeals, the man discovered that he is actually in charge of the whole executive and that he can just do things:
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has… commented in a press release: “The safety of Berliners is my top priority. That is why I have instructed the Senator for Transport today to issue a general ruling without delay, allowing private individuals and the VSR to use road salt on sidewalks to remove the ice cover.” Wegner further emphasised that he was aware that this decision was “associated with legal uncertainties.” Nevertheless, he considered it appropriate due to the “special situation”. “There is still a need for the fastest possible legal regulation to create legal certainty for the future. We will continue to discuss this in the coalition in the near future.”
Of course Wegner could have waived these retarded rules weeks ago before all those elderly people ended up with grievous injuries in overflowing emergency rooms. At least the harm to Berlin’s trees has been minimised, I guess.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Hey, what’s more important, citizens or trees?
Difficulty: they want to cut down trees and dump them in the ocean, and they are horrified at the thought of CO2 being plant food and growing more trees faster.
It’s obvious who is more important.
Humans release co2.
Trees absorb it.
Just use calcium nitrate the plants love it
As I recall individuals aee forbidden to use salt to fight ice all over Germany, but it’s still freely sold and authorities can use it as much as they want. Two standards, ludicrus like all ideas ecotards come up with.
The classless utopia
can’t even pervent classstruggle in terms of salt.
Btw, it’s the same major playing tennis while terrorists burned down Berlins SW electric feed-in for days.
Mountaineering boots
Essential kit in dystopian Berlin
Well, actually no. Mountaineering boots have rubber soles and won’t work a whole lot better than street shoes.
Microspikes or a similar elastic pull-on micro crampon is the ticket. The problem is unless one is a fairly serious hiker or mountaineer (or live in Canada) you won’t have them when you need them.
Story Tip
Increasingly the green and net zero agendas are running up against reality, and being seen by the voters to be doing that. Here is a story on the BBC about some unfortunate chap who made the mistake of buying an electric car, in accordance with UK and local policy, but has then found out that charging it was close to impossible:
Buying an electric car was my stupidest decision
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4qe0wv9yyo
Its an example of a problem that is becoming general as the UK policy of banning all ICE car sales after 2030 starts to bite.
The UK is on the tip of having a bill come due. The bill is for destroying reliable and plentiful power generation by moving to wind and solar, while at the same time raising demand by moving everyone to EVs and heat pumps.
There are only two possible outcomes to this. The first is blackouts, if they persist and also allow unrestricted use of charging points.
The second is rationing. Keep promising more points, but just don’t install them, or install too few, or restrict their use.
Its the same kind of mindless surrender to a bright green idea, without either careful examination or pilot testing, that the German salt debacle is revealing. Why did they not take an area of a city and implement the ban there, and see how it worked out? See how people managed to get around.
Why does the UK not convert a small area to EVs, and find out just how much demand rises and how the local grid copes? And what happens if you restrict charging power use?
It is just asking for a pile of unintended disastrous consequences.
”unintended” ?
A never ending supply of problems for central planners to attempt to solve.
Ed, as we know, lives in fantasy land. Fewer than 300,000 heat pumps have been installed since 2019. The Tories had a target of 600,000 pa from 2028. Ed has reduced that to 450,000 but only 84,000 were installed in 2024.
Over 22m of the 28m+ homes in the country are on the gas network and the vast majority are going to remain on that network for many many years to come.
Then you have to factor in all the ‘cowboys’ that are magnetically attracted to expensive government schemes!
The Left wing policies of the Tories did a lot of damage to Britain. That’s why they lost the elections.
I once saw a clip on the TV that a concentrated solution of sugar molasses was sprayed on roadway to prevent the formation of ice.
They might try springling cane sugar on the ice.
Ask the trees before acting, they may not like it. 🤣
I talk to the trees
But they don’t listen to me
The idea was that microbes in the soil would use the sugar that runs off the road with the melt water.
Maple trees are especially sensitive to salt as the ions change the soil structure and the roots can’t absorb nutrients.
They could also burn them clean. Just ask Sir Arthur Harris how that can be done.
Also quite popular for roads is a beet sugar solution.
I live in a Midwest US city where it frequently snows. We salt our streets and sidewalks. We also have lots of trees — many growing in/on the “tree lawn” between the streets and sidewalks.
We have an Urban Forestry Commission available weekdays 8:00 am to 4:30 pm.
The goal of Urban Forestry is to provide a safe urban forest while striving to preserve its natural beauty. This office’s activities include the pruning of street trees, the removal of trees that are a risk to public safety, and the planting of street trees (when funding is available).
Maybe the Germans need to spend some time and money to catch up.
Actually the best way to treat compacted ice on pavements is to spread grit on them. This is what ski resorts do, at least in the Alps.
Besides salt is inefffective below -7C.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dalhousie-university-professor-says-it-s-not-too-cold-for-road-salt-1.2960143
Bunter gets it wrong again!
Someone put grit on our docks last winter. The result was damaged boats where the grit got under bumpers.
Grit doesn’t dissolve and wash away either.
It also blocks drains!
Growing up in Northern Minnesota in the ’50s & 60s, there were numerous alternatives to salt. I don’t recall any salt use at that time. Dry sand was common (it had to be dried and kept dry all winter or it would solidify into a large frozen block). The highway department had large sand spreading trucks. Ground up “clinkers” from coal furnaces were even more common. fertilizer pellets worked great and were good for the grass if not overdone. The best thing for sidewalks was to clear the snow before it was packed in place.
car tire chains were ubiquitous, too. Clamp-on chains under shoes worked great, too. The city even had sidewalk sized bulldozers for snow clearing. The number one rule for ice was “walk carefully”. Of course, up there it was so cold that your layers of coats were like falling on a pillow if you did slip.
The best thing for sidewalks was to clear the snow before it was packed in place. That’s what people used to do in front of the house.
If it benefits people, greens will be
opposed.
Greens need to oppress the hoards of peasants, that’s their job, after all.
My late father flew B-17s out of Thurleigh, England. 35 missions, Frankfurt 3 times. DFC & 5 Air Medals.
8-500 pounders. What was it like on the ground when that shit arrived? And the allies could put a thousand planes over a target.
Looks they got over it but forgot why.
BTW if in Colorado Springs the WW II aviation museum is a must see.
Vermont, New York show stark differences in snow removal policies
Video alert, interesting difference between snow removal of two adjoining states.
Great video. I live in northern Michigan….except for the interstates and a few other very busy roads, under the current conditions, ie constant snow and very cold, the roads are simply covered with ice and snow. That includes spreading salt and sand. On many backroads, a plow passes by if the road is near impassible. Part of the reason for all this is that snowmobiles are allowed to use the side of the back roads, and residents may not want their roads cleared. Once the ice hits however, ie the slip and break something stuff, the ice and sand are poured on. Idiotic to do otherwise.
Used to have nice trees in the parking lot at work. “Pickle” killed them. City insisted they be replanted back to permit requirements. Cost tens of $K. Just sayin’….Their decision to ban salt might be based on unique circumstances of which you aren’t aware. Plus if you slip when conditions are slippery, is it an act of God or an act of unpreparedness ?
An interesting side note…our city requires that everyone shovel their sidewalk within 24 hours of a snowfall or be fined…yet I recently visited a city where more snowfall is the norm…and no such bylaw exists because it is not expected that homeowners can keep up with the snowfall. My wife’s home town had snowblowers and sweepers out on the sidewalks after every snow, another different policy. So slippery sidewalk policies are highly variable.
Have they blamed global warming for the ice problem, yet?
Do keep up it’s all about the warmening Arctic silly-
Poles flock to frozen Baltic Sea beach as temperatures plunge
They’re OK to walk on it because beaches are naturally salty or there’d be a law against it.
You just can’t make this stuff up. Yet another example of inept and corrupt government. Why would you ban a safety precaution without providing an alternative? What a bunch of knuckleheads.
People never learn unless stupid hurts.
Why don’t they want to use the salt?
I asked one of our neighbors, an experienced 94 year old woodsman, how he handles icy walks and paths. He just said “Baby steps”. He’s right, just take it easy and don’t try to win any races.