Slippery roads and streets caused several accidents and falls on Friday. Code yellow will still apply throughout the Netherlands until at least Saturday afternoon, but the KNMI does not rule out that the alarm code will remain on all weekend due to the slipperiness.
Especially in the west of the country, it was busy in the emergency department on Friday. According to various hospitals, including in Delft, Rotterdam and Goes, dozens of people ended up in the emergency room with broken bones due to the slipperiness. The Haga Hospital in The Hague will deploy extra people on Saturday because it takes into account a new influx of injured people.
Many car accidents also occurred due to freezing of wet road sections. Vehicles ended up in the water in several places across the country. Most people got off with a fright, but in Zeeland one person was killed after his car ended up in the ditch. The police are investigating the cause of the accident, but it seems that the slipperiness played a role.
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Help from gritters
Some local roads were so slippery that emergency services had to be assisted by road gritters. In Rotterdam gritters first had to turn out to make slippery roads passable for the fire brigade, who otherwise could not reach a fire. According to the ANWB, the through roads are well sprinkled, but it can still be very slippery on inland roads.
Ambulance employees were so busy on Friday due to the slippery conditions that the North Holland safety regions called for caution: “Here is the urgent advice to pay attention to the bicycle. Small streets and slippery sidewalks pose a risk of falling. Be careful when you go out.”
Newspaper deliverers also suffered from the slipperiness, which meant that the newspaper was delivered later in some places. Thuisbezorgd kept its own delivery drivers aside for a while in some cities on Thursday evening due to slipperiness. Due to the black ice, the company did not think it was responsible to send delivery drivers on the road by bicycle or electric bicycle.
This weekend
It’s not likely to get much warmer than freezing this weekend. “As a result, it doesn’t thaw really hard on the road, unless sprinkled. Condensation forms and then freezes up again,” says a KNMI spokesperson. According to the institute, there is a good chance that code yellow will therefore continue to apply throughout the weekend. “Certainly if there is no precipitation, you do not see that it is slippery so quickly, which makes this smoothness extra treacherous.”
The KNMI therefore advises everyone who goes outside to be extra careful and road users to keep their distance from each other.
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