“Vehicle salvage and trees will keep us busy”

Vehicle rescues and fallen trees occupied the fire brigades in large parts of Upper Austria during the night and during the day. In the first half of the day alone, 150 deployments were recorded. Around 2,000 firefighters from more than 160 fire brigades were mainly involved in recovering vehicles and removing trees that had been brought down by snow and wind. Among other things, a snow plow had to be pulled out of the ditch.

For the roofs, however, the situation is not yet critical, says Brandrat Markus Voglhuber, press spokesman for the state fire brigade command: “We are following the weather and the prospects closely. Vehicle salvage and the load on the trees will certainly keep us busy – but the snow loads on the roofs are currently not an issue in normal construction work. In 2006 we had completely different dimensions.” According to Ö-Norm, roofs in the central area should be designed for around 100 kilos of load per square meter, in southern Upper Austria around 200 kilos per square meter, according to the press spokesman – “we’re talking about more than one meter or about two meters of snow in the mountains.”

In the winter of 2005/06, the fire brigades were deployed on a large scale to shovel off roofs. Due to the weight of the snow masses, several hall and house roofs collapsed in Upper Austria and Salzburg. A little later, the mark for the maximum load was raised.