KrakowInformer.com

Dust cloud from the volcano stopped many officials heading for Krakow

Crashed government plane

The First Couple's tombstone

Krakow's airport - Balice

United States president, Barack Obama and several other officials have cancelled their arrival for Sunday’s funeral celebrations of President Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, tragically killed in a plane crash on April 10th near Smolensk, Russia.

After identification and transporting to Poland, bodies of the First Couple were displayed in the President’s Palace in Warsaw. For past three days tens of thousands of Poles were coming to honor them, standing in line for as long as seventeen hours.

On Sunday morning the bodies will be transported from Warsaw to Krakow where at 2 pm the ceremony will start in St Mary’s Church – Kościół Mariacki. Afterwards the First Couple will be transported to Wawel castle, where they will be put in a sarcophagus of alabaster located in a crypt under one of Wawel cathedral’s towers, next to Marshall Józef Piłsudski, a 1920s Polish leader.

Code yellow has been announced for all public service officers. Several streets around the Market Square and Wawel will be completely closed for public, as well as the inside of St. Mary’s and Wawel hill. Final burial ceremony in Wawel crypt will be held only for the family.

Due to recent explosion of one of Iceland’s volcano has Krakow’s airport has been closed indefinitely, as a cloud of a volcano dust is posing a threat to airplanes’ engines. Meteorological experts say that it is not likely for the cloud over Krakow and Europe to disperse quickly, as the volcano is still erupting and emitting new masses of dust.