According to police, a 52-year-old pedestrian in Lünen near Dortmund in North Rhine-Westphalia had to be resuscitated on Friday night after he had allegedly fallen on a slippery sidewalk. Witnesses noticed the lifeless man and alerted the police. After resuscitation, the man was taken to a hospital.
In several regions, official warnings of “significant slippery conditions” due to freezing rain were in effect until Friday. In addition to North Rhine-Westphalia, large parts of other federal states from Lower Saxony and Hesse to Brandenburg and Berlin to Thuringia and Bavaria were also affected. The situation eased over the course of Friday, but a general ice warning was still in effect in much of Germany.
From Friday evening onwards, the German Weather Service also expected an increasing risk of slippery conditions due to permanent frost, especially in the center and northeast. However, this should subside again on Saturday; the danger still remains locally only in the central low mountain range.
The police also reported weather-related accidents with serious injuries on Friday, particularly in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. In Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday evening, a 20-year-old fell on a slippery road directly in front of a bus that rolled over her legs. According to police, she was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.
On Autobahn 7 near Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, a police officer was seriously injured while securing the scene of an accident when a driver following behind skidded while braking on slippery roads on Thursday evening and hit the officer. The 53-year-old was thrown against a guardrail and the driver was slightly injured.
From the region around Dortmund and Lünen alone, the police reported more than a hundred accidents between Thursday evening and Friday morning, more than 80 in the Bochum area and more than 70 in the Recklinghausen police area. Motorways were also partially affected. The Moers fire department reported seven accident sites on the A40 and A57 on Thursday evening, with a total of around 20 cars involved and 13 injured. In some cases, injured people could only have been brought to hospitals “at walking speed”.
In Berlin, the city cleaning department said it went into “full deployment” on Thursday evening because of lightning ice and sprinkled salt on important streets and cycle paths. The fire department spoke of a state of emergency. All available Berlin ambulances were occupied and in use.
