A hospital spokeswoman has urged Berliners to attach spikes to their shoes and try "walking like penguins" to avoid falling in the treacherous conditions that have plagued the city for weeks.Repeated snowfall and freezing rain have coated the open-air insane asylum known as Berlin in a thin sheet of slippery ice since the beginning of January. To spare plants, city environmental laws have long forbidden using salt on pedestrian paths and stairways, and so residents have been falling and injuring themselves at such high rates that emergency rooms have had trouble keeping up:
Berlin’s emergency rooms are working flat out due to the icy conditions. At the BG Accident Hospital in Berlin, staff are "close to the limit," press spokeswoman Angela Kijewski told Apollo News. On Thursday alone, there were 100 injuries due to slippery sidewalks and roads. These included bruises, broken bones and traumatic brain injuries. One patient has even suffered paraplegia.
As the press spokeswoman reported ... in the last few days since the ice storm, staff have typically had to treat 50 to 70 patients a day who have been injured due to the slippery conditions. The hospital is responsible for work-related accidents and accidents on the way to work and is therefore prepared for large-scale emergencies — with the appropriate equipment and personnel. But even there, the slippery conditions are pushing them to their limits.
"Our surgeons are operating into the night," Kijewski said .... Many of the patients require immediate surgery, while in other cases, fractures must first be immobilized with a cast and allowed to heal before further treatment can be given.
For weeks, politicians have resisted relaxing their salt prohibition, despite the danger to life and limb. SPD "environmental expert" Linda Vierecke, for example, pronounced herself "sceptical" about any changes because the salt is bad for the trees. Somehow the extensive salt that the city already uses to de-ice motorways, other public transit routes and bike paths is okay though....