Drone captures stunning images of abandoned town encased in ice
Frigid temperatures created an eerie scene in an abandoned mining region.
Temperatures have plunged to -50°C in northwestern Russia, leaving some structures encased in snow and ice.
And in the abandoned coal-mining town Vorkuta it has created an unbelievable scene, recently captured on camera by drones.
KOMI REPUBLIC, RUSSIA - MARCH 7, 2021: A room in a house in the abandoned village of Tsementozavodsky located beyond the Arctic Circle, 18km northeast of the city of Vorkuta in the Komi Republic, northwestern Russia. The village of Tsementozavodsky was built in the 1950s for the workers of the Vorkuta cement plant. In 1979, the population of the village amounted to 5.2 thousand people; in the early 2000s, the plant went bankrupt, and the village became deserted. Today, the village is officially a neighborhood of Vorkuta and hosts about 80 families. Photo courtesy: Anton Burnasov/TASS. Caption courtesy: Reuters.
Unemployment and frigid temperatures have created several ghost towns in the area.
Vorkuta proper was the fourth-largest city north of the Arctic Circle and Europe's easternmost town in Europe -- and it's the coldest city on the continent, with temperatures regularly plunging to the -50 mark.
MARCH 7, 2021: A sign at an entrance to the abandoned village of Tsementozavodsky. Anton Burnasov/TASS.No use Russia.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, privatization of the mining sector prompted people to abandon the isolated and frigid communities surrounding Vorkuta.
However, the abandoned structures and the picturesque scenes they create remain.