Snowstorm blows smoking woman from balcony

A seventy-year-old woman was blown from her balcony on the Russian island of Sakhalin when she smoked a cigarette.

There was so much snow around the flat that an ambulance could not reach the woman. She was put in the bin of a shovel and taken to a hospital.

The island of Sakhalin, which lies in the Sea of ​​Ochotsk before the Russian east coast, has been plagued by very heavy snowstorms for several days. About sixty cars and a bus with thirty passengers had to be dug up in the night from Monday to Tuesday because they had got stuck in the snow.