President Borut Pahor and Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek will visit Wednesday areas affected by a crippling ice storm as the clean up efforts around Slovenia enter a fifth day.
An estimated 50,000 households were still without electricity on Tuesday as clean up teams struggled to repair dozens of kilometres of transmission lines damaged by the ice.
The bulk of the households affected lies in Notranjsko region, southwest of Ljubljana, around the cities of Postojna and the towns of Cerknica and Pivka.
Pahor is scheduled to visit Pivka to meet with local disaster relief teams which are trying to restore normal life to the area.
Bratušek and Defence Minister Roman Jakič will meanwhile travel to Ljubno ob Savinji in central Slovenia to inspect the damage and speak to relief teams.
Meteorologists have warned that weather forecasts for the coming days are unlikely to bring much relief, as rain and near-freezing temperatures will continue to cause problems.
Additionally, a southwesterly wind is expected to blow on Wednesday, which could cause more damage to power lines and trees which are weighed down by a thick layer of ice.
In addition to causing mass power outages, the ice storm has crippled life in many parts of the country, causing kindergartens and schools to close and companies to scale down or even halt operations.
The ice storm has also severely affected Slovenia's forests, with as much as half of the trees sustaining some kind of damage.
Source: SloveniaTimes
