Overview
- Police logged 565 traffic crashes between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning as freezing rain turned roads and sidewalks treacherous.
- Berlin’s fire and rescue service reported about 1,420 missions by afternoon, deployed nearly all ambulances, and grounded all three rescue helicopters due to frost.
- Emergency departments at several clinics, including four run by Johannesstift Diakonie, were overfilled, with operating theatres and ICUs also near capacity as non-urgent patients were urged to contact GPs or the on-call service.
- Potsdam’s Klinikum Ernst von Bergmann declared a mass-casualty incident and treated up to 86 people at once, while city buses were halted for hours on mirror-slick streets.
- Charité reported more than 200 ice-related cases and up to 130 patients simultaneously in its ERs, with typical injuries involving shoulder, arm and hip fractures.