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Berlin (dpa) - The winter continues to cause freezing cold in Germany - however, drivers no longer had to accept any major disabilities on Thursday night.
In Jena, however, the icy temperatures caused a disaster: around 6,500 households there had to get by without heating and hot water after a district heating line was interrupted.
It was unclear when the district heating supply could be resumed.
The residents were asked to keep windows and doors closed in order to delay the cooling of their apartments.
Some citizens were referred to emergency shelters.
Employees of the municipal utilities and specialist companies in the Thuringian city had spent hours looking for the cause of the accident and tore open a street for it.
In the evening they found what they were looking for: a line in an intersection area had a leak that should be repaired that night.
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Elsewhere the situation remained calm during the night.
In the Bielefeld area, where cars and trucks on the A2 had jammed extremely in the past few nights, the traffic flowed largely without problems.
"It's more relaxed than the nights before," said a police spokesman.
According to the police there, many trucks were still parked on the hard shoulder near Braunschweig because rest areas were full.
But there were no accidents.
A spokesman for the Göttingen motorway police said that there were “finally no problems”.
In other regions, too, the police stations reported comparatively few ice accidents.
However, there was a fatal traffic accident in the Sigmaringen district in Baden-Württemberg.
A 41-year-old was caught in oncoming traffic in wintry road conditions - and was killed.
There was a minor accident in the Ravensburg district: A 52-year-old man got off the B12 in his van in the snow and broke through the wall of a farmhouse on the ground floor.
This then had to be supported by the fire brigade.
The damage to the house is estimated at 50,000 euros.
The driver of the van was unharmed, the housemaid got away with the horror.
In the Mecklenburg Lake District district, three people were injured when a car slipped and crashed into a tree.
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Away from the street, the emergency services were also busy with snow and slippery roads - on Wednesday they reported more leisure emergencies: Rescuers spent hours looking for a man in a pond in Berlin who had apparently consciously stepped into the water - presumably for bathing or diving.
According to the fire department, he was brought to a special clinic “under resuscitation conditions”.
Two children broke into the ice of a pond near Flensburg.
A married couple watched the incident and rescued the children between the ages of four and six from the freezing water.
According to the railway, the most important north-south and east-west long-distance traffic connections on Wednesday were “mostly stable, albeit with significant delays”.
On Thursday, traffic from Dresden towards Leipzig and Frankfurt should start again, as the train reported on its website.
Also between Hamburg and Kiel as well as Lübeck there should be a “limited offer” again.
It will remain frosty in Germany in the coming days.
According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the night on Wednesday was the coldest of the year so far.
"Over the deeply snow-covered middle and the east, it cooled down in areas to below minus 20 degrees," explained meteorologist Adrian Leyser.
"Coldspot" was Thuringia with a low of minus 26.7 degrees Celsius, measured in Mühlhausen. "
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Meanwhile, the deserted inner cities in the corona lockdown make it easier for the few cold buses to take care of the homeless.
«The streets have been completely empty so far.
It is of course easier to get through the pedestrian zones.
You can also recognize the homeless faster, ”says Sandra Welsch, who as a social worker for the German Red Cross in Stuttgart coordinates the use of the cold bus there.
If restaurants or clubs are open, there are significantly more people and drunk partiers who disrupt the work of the volunteers, she continues.
Homeless people can also find a place to sleep more easily at the moment because shops are closed.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210211-99-390934 / 2