They're trying to break into jail as city heads for -40C

[barb162]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1991085,00.html

They're trying to break into jail as city heads for -40C

From Jeremy Page in Moscow



VITALY has tried being drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, even assaulting a friend — anything to get inside a Moscow police cell.

Any other week, the 42-year-old vagrant would do anything to avoid the city’s notorious police. But with a cold front from Siberia pushing temperatures towards -40C – their lowest in more than half a century — getting arrested has become a matter of life or death.


“At least it’s warm in a cell,” he said. “In this weather, if you can’t find a warm place to sleep, you die.”

On Monday two people froze to death and 14 were taken to hospital with hypothermia in the capital as temperatures plunged from zero to -28C
snip

[roguevalley]

1. unless you've ever been in -40, you can't imagine. its hell.

[rockymountaindem]

3. I've been in -40 at University of Toronto

I couldn't believe all the warning signs they put up, but then I remembered all the students we have here from Hong Kong, India, Pakistan etc. who've never even seen snow, nevermind -40. They had stuff all over reminding people to cover every part of their bodies, and (amusingly) not take any dares to put exposed skin on frozen metal!

On a more serious note, they also advised the whole student body to call the police or paramedics immediately if we saw any homeless people. We were told to assume they were either insane or somehow incapacitated if they were outsided in that weather and not to a) reason with them or b) give them alcohol. One day when it was quite sunny but totally freezing (at least -25) I came across an apparently blind man at an intersection on campus and asked him which way he wanted to go. All he did was groan at me. I kept trying to talk to him and he didn't say one intelligible thing. I saw a cop car on the other side of the intersection and started jumping up and down, waving at them. As they drove over and I started talking to them, the dude on the corner started wandering out into traffic. I simply said "That guy is really confused and I don't think he knows where he's going" which at that point was pretty obvious. I left the situation in the hands of the police and walked off. At least in Toronto I know they have a lot of resources available to help people like him, because the alternative is having frozen corpses on the sidewalk, and nobody wants that.

[A Simple Game]

4. I have seen as low as -42 in Northern New York.

Yes it is hell.

Pray you don't have to spend any time outside when it is that cold. And that is from an Agnostic.

[mom cat]

2. Damn that is cold. I lived through a -30 and that was bad enough. When it

finally warmed up to 0, I thought it was a heat wave.