Mazowsze

5th March 2010

He got out of his vehicle and began to attack the other vehicle with the heavy implements... Share:

A drunk motorist went on the rampage in Natolin after causing an accident, running riot with a spade and a sledgehammer and damaging five cars in total. The incident began when the 32-year-old crashed into an oncoming Skoda. He got out of his vehicle and began to attack the other vehicle with the heavy implements, smashing the windscreen, then going on to attack a further three vehicles that approached the scene before fleeing on foot.

When police arrived they rapidly tracked the man down to a neighbouring village using tracker dogs. He was under the influence of alcohol. The weapons were retrieved from his car and while searching his property police found a gas powered weapon for which the man did not possess a licence. The man is in custody awaiting a variety of charges.

Swift punishment

In a landmark judgement this week, the Director of a Radom housing cooperative has been found guilty of blocking ventilation shafts in flats where swifts, a protected species, were nesting. In May 2009 work was carried out insulating a block on the Ustronie estate. Residents immediately raised the alarm when they saw the ventilation shafts where the birds regularly nested were being covered with polystyrene tiles.

Despite visits from environmental protection officers and negotiations over protecting the birds, work continued regardless. The cooperative insist they cooperated with the bird-lovers, but the court decided that not enough ventilation shafts had been left open and building management were guilty of startling and causing unnecessary stress to the nesting birds.

Flood crisis averted

Ice-breakers working non-stop for the past few weeks on the Wisla have finally broken through a blockage which was threatening the city of Plock with flooding. On Wednesday morning, with waters in the Wisla more than 2m higher than alarm state, Vice President Dariusz Zawidzki held a crisis conference, exclaiming, “It’s getting worse by the minute.” At about midday, though, the team of seven icebreakers succeeded in breaking through the ice, with the waters immediately beginning to fall away.

At its peak, twenty homes and about 160 people had to be evacuated, but the worst now appears to be over. Weather forecasters predict that the next few days will be colder, slowing down the rate of thaw and, as a result the flow of water into the rivers.