Heavy snow isolated areas in Romania, Moldova and Albania on Tuesday and turned a power plant in Kosovo into a park of dazzling ice sculptures.

Firefighters and emergency services workers dig in high snow to clear the access to a snowed in house in the village of Silistea Glodeanu, Romania, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 the day after more snow storms hit the area.

Snow is as deep as 4.5 meters in Romania.

In Glodeanu Silistea village, some 100 kilometres North East of Bucharest, people struggled to dig their houses out of the snow.

Across the country authorities have been forced to use helicopters and army trucks to deliver food and medicine and to help the sick reach hospitals.

About 4,000 Romanian coal miners volunteered to buy tins of food from the money their employer gives them for hot meals and donate them to the worst-affected snow victims in the East of the country. Five Romanians died in the past 24 hours due to the cold, bringing total weather-related deaths to 79.

Neighbouring Moldova also has been hit hard by snow, with schools, borders, highways and train services in both countries shut down in some areas as temperatures went down sharply overnight. The Romanian rail network CFR cancelled 413 trains due to heavy snow on the lines.

Albania, meanwhile, has declared a state of emergency in the worst-affected areas.