BUCHAREST, Romania — Snow as deep as 15 feet (4.5 meters) isolated areas of Romania, Moldova and Albania on Tuesday, and helicopters and army trucks were used to deliver food and medicine, and to transport sick people to hospitals.
In Romania, thousands of coal miners volunteered to donate some of their food to help feed people in isolated areas of their country.
Officials said five Romanians died in the past 24 hours due to frigid temperatures, bringing the total to 79 weather-related deaths since the nation's cold spell began. Neighboring Moldova also has been hard hit by snow, and both countries have seen schools, borders, highways and train services shut down in some areas as temperatures plunged to -9 Fahrenheit (-23 Celsius) overnight.
Adrian Vlaicu, a spokesman for the Romanian rail network CFR, said 413 trains have been canceled due to heavy snow on the lines.
On Tuesday, about 4,000 Romanian coal miners volunteered to buy tins of food from the money the company gives them for hot meals and donate that to the worst-affected victims in eastern Romania.
In Albania, army trucks and helicopters brought food and medicine to 250,000 people who were isolated in their communities by deep snow, which also was causing power outages and shortages of fodder for cows and sheep on farms.
The roofs of about two dozen houses, including that of a 300-year-old church in southeastern Albania, collapsed under the weight of the snow, but no injuries were reported.
On Sunday, Albania declared a state of natural emergency in some of the worst-affected areas.
Since the end of January, Eastern Europe has been pummeled by a record-breaking cold snap and the heaviest snowfalls in recent memory. Hundreds of people, many of them homeless, have died and tens of thousands of residents have been snowed in across the region.
But the worst affected areas of Europe are now in Romania, Moldova and Albania.
Llazar Semini contributed from Tirana, Albania, and Corneliu Rusnac from Chisinau, Moldova.