Too many days of winter holidays, too many problems

Ten days of New Year holidays in Russia were marked with a traditional surge of crimes and car accidents. In Moscow, the holidays were marked with a number of political scandals. The residents of the Moscow region will remember the 2011 holidays for blackouts, when thousands of people had to live without electricity, water and heating because of weather conditions, the Moskovskaya Pravda newspaper wrote.

The Moscow police had to work a lot during the holidays. On New Year's night, ten young men assaulted a group of women on Moscow's Khoroshovskoye Shosse. The women asked the men not to explode firecrackers near them.

Firecrackers traditionally injure many people during the winter holidays in Russia. A 28-year-old woman was seriously injured when a firecracker landed on her head. Another woman suffered a serious injury when a cracker flew into her nose. In total, crackers injured 23 people on New Year's night.

Thirty fires took place in Moscow during the first two days of January; four people were killed. One hundred and fifty-three fires were registered in Moscow from December 31 to January 10: 14 people were killed and ten were seriously injured.

Two people were killed and over 100 were injured in various car accidents in Moscow during the holidays. The road police arrested nearly 400 drivers for DUI. Seventy-three of them were arrested on January 1.

Residents of the Moscow region will remember the dark New Year holidays 2011 for a long time. Many towns in the region were cut from electricity because of the ice storm, which caused a great deal of problems for Moscow and the region at the end of December. As a result, about 400,000 people had to spend the holidays without electricity, hot water and heating.

Ice-covered trees damaged many power lines in the Moscow region. Repair crews had to take monstrous efforts to fix the problem, but on January 2 a heavy snowfall damaged the power lines again and led to more blackouts.

Those living in apartment buildings with electric stoves in them found themselves in a very difficult situation. They had to make fires outside to cook some food.