'This Is Crazy, Really Crazy'

As reported by Michael Kelley, Business Insider, February 6, 2014

Three days of blizzards and a freak ice storm have inflicted "the worst devastation in living memory" in the small Alpine country of Slovenia as life in half of the country is frozen in place.

Unexpected rain in the west rapidly turned to ice, entombing cars, trains, ATM's, and power lines in addition to half of Slovenia's forests (roughly 1.2 million acres).

A tiny EU member-state already going through a recession and a bank bailout over billions of euros in toxic debt, Slovenia is now facing the worst economic crisis in two decades.

"Slovenia has witnessed a major natural disaster," Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek said while visiting the badly-hit town of Ljubno ob Savinji.

"In the 35 years I've worked here, I've never seen anything like this," a railway worker told Reuters. "It will take another two months before trains can run again."

And more snow is forecast before Slovenians deal with the added risk of flooding once the ice melts.

Mateusz Frym, part of a team of Austrian emergency workers who came with 26 generators to help, told Reuters, "We have a lot of snow in Austria, but this is crazy, really crazy."

[All photos by REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic]