Citizen often dying, especially during Winter

[Tycondero]

I am fairly new to the game (have it since full release). I have done several games now on the Eastern European map and built a city in full realism mode up to 2500 inhabitants. Almost every year it seems that, especially during winter, about 20% of the population dies. I have inspected everything and built a new large heating plant with full size heating connections about 7 years ago in game to give more heating during winter. All buildings seem to get sufficient heating during winter, though sometimes very briefly the heating plant switches off due to lack of workers as I have the heating plant outside of the city as I want to prevent pollution.

Is it normal that so many citizen die during winter each year? I feel like it is not, but I cannot find a way to resolve this issue. Citizen happiness is around 60-70% and I do not have a lot of escapees.

[melkij]

The cyclical increase in deaths in winter is in most cases due to pollution from the heating plant. How far is it from residential buildings?

[Tycondero]

I have built this plant about 750-1000 meters outside of the city. According to some pollution meters I placed around it seems that even in the areas with no to few factories and no to mild pollution these citizens die.

Btw, initially I had a heating (small) plant in the city, but I got the impression that this might be detrimental to the population as housing near that location had a significant lower life expectancy (around 40-50).

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Any pollution is bad, but you also need enough heat to get to the buildings and the plants need to be running as reliably as possible.

[kiky]

Winter makes everything harder.

it might be but is not limited to:
heating plant not getting workers so peoples homes are cold.
to many buildings for one heating plant so peoples homes are cold.
extra polution from heating plant (should not be an issue at 1000m)
extra polution from garbage not being collected in time because snow on roads.
people starving from not enought food geting delivered due to snow on the road.

click on houses, read the red text at the very top what they are complaining about.

[SmlehliW]

Originally posted by kiky:

... people starving from not enought food geting delivered ...

make extra full storage food and meat (cooling) connectet to your markets/stores and support them