Bad Weather Blues: Lumping Travel Delays With Death

Unusually heavy snowfall and extremely low temperatures have literally frozen holiday travel plans for tens thousands of Europeans. The weather has also caused more than 80 deaths across the continent. The delays and deaths are both unfortunate side effects of a prolonged cold snap, but should they be covered as one?

Probably not. An article in the BBC today -- "Big freeze brings misery and death" -- details Europe's weather woes, weaving anecdotes of Eurostar's limited service in with the fatality stats in a way that implies the travel delays between France and England are somehow linked to the rising death toll. A New York Times article cushions the winter-weather death toll in a paragraph unraveling a time line of holiday travel horror stories.

Eurostar had suspended services for three days when five trains broke down in the Channel tunnel, trapping passengers on the trains for hours and postponing or canceling travel plans for fairly large chunk of the European population. But no one has died a travel-related death.

Instead, the deaths have been almost entirely concentrated in Poland, and have occurred primarily within the homeless population who've been forced to sleep outside in sub-zero temperatures. The fatalities seem to be an afterthought to the coverage of the ongoing travel travails and Eurostar's breakdown, which is painted as the larger problem.

The merging of tales of Europe's cold snap by the media certainly doesn't do justice to the homeless in Poland who are dying in the frigid outdoors, but it does well (intentionally or not) to dramatize the plight of the Europeans who still can't catch a train home for Christmas.