Killer Storm Strikes France and Spain
The fiercest storms in a decade with record wind speeds struck southwest France and Spain with deadly power today, cutting electricity to 1.9 million households, closing airports and putting a nuclear plant on alert. At least 12 people died, including four boys.
The four boys, ages nine to 12, had taken refuge at a Barcelona area sports complex where they were playing when high winds caused a roof to cave in, El Pais reported. Nine other youngsters were injured, a Sant Boi de Llobregat spokeswoman said.
Two people died in France’s Landes region after their cars were struck by falling trees, France 5 TV reported. Le Figaro reported that a 78-year-old man also died after being hit by flying debris outside his home in Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse. TV footage showed overturned trucks, fallen chimneys and sunken power boats.
The Spanish victims practicing on a sports field had taken cover from powerful winds that struck the Catalunya region, part of an intense weather system that battered Spain and France, creating storm surf as well as heavy snow in the French and Swiss Alps.
The French weather service Meteo France sent out a red alert, saying the storm may be as strong as one in December 1999. That one killed more than 80 people and caused 4.6 billion euros ($6 billion) in insured damage, EQE International said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to the stricken region tomorrow, his office said.
Elsewhere in Spain, a woman died when a wall fell on her in Barcelona and a traffic officer was killed by a falling tree in northwest Galicia, according to Spanish news reports.
The reports said a road worker died in the village of La Palma de Cervello when struck by a falling tree, another man was crushed to death when a wall collapsed in Alicante and a fisherman died after being rescued from a sinking boat in La Coruna.
In France, the Aquitaine and Roussilon regions bore the brunt of today’s storm, Meteo France said, shutting roads, airports and rail traffic. “Very major damage should be expected,” Meteo France said on its Web site.
Airports were closed in Bordeaux and Toulouse, where Airbus SAS has production facilities, but reopened by nightfall.
In Spain, 51 flights were canceled from Bilbao on the north coast to the resort island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean.
At 6 p.m. local time, winds had subsided in southwest France as the storm moved from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean. Meteo France lifted emergency alerts for most of the region except for the Pyrenees-Orientale and Aude areas on the Mediterranean.
Electricite de France, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, also lifted an internal emergency plan at the reactor site in Blayais, on the mouth of the Gironde River near Bordeaux, France’s Nuclear Security Authority said.
The plan was set in motion four hours earlier because winds exceeded safety levels, alerting EDF to prepare for possible flooding of the plant, the nuclear authority said. The site’s four reactors functioned normally, it added.
Waves as high as 8 meters (at least 26 feet) were expected close to shore in the Bay of Biscay, causing “strong breaking waves” along the coast, Meteo France said.
Rail operator Societe Nationale de Chemins de Fer Francais, or SNCF, said the storm halted train traffic in the Aquitaine and Midi Pyrenees regions. High-speed services between Paris and Bordeaux resumed after a power outage caused by the storm, SNCF said.
“We have very high winds of 150 to 170 kilometers per hour (93 to 106 mph),” said Michel Derdevet, a spokesman for the French power-grid operator RTE. Power outages affected about 1.7 million people in France, according to Electricite Reseau Distribution France, and 200,000 in Spain, said the Spanish news agency Efe.
The storm started hammering the Atlantic coast of Aquitaine at 4 a.m., according to RTE. As of 4:30 p.m., 78 power substations and 100 high-voltage and very high-voltage lines were out of order, RTE said. The sports complex in Spain was struck about 11:15 a.m.
France warned of rain and snowfall in addition to the storm, with a strong risk of avalanches in the Pyrenees and the Savoie region of the French Alps. The alert isn’t expected to be called off before the end of the weekend, the service said.
In the Swiss Alps, gusts of more than 170 kilometers per hour were recorded while winds reached more than 150 kilometers per hour in the Jura mountains and central Switzerland, Swiss broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen said on its Web site. Winds in the valleys of the Alps reached as much as 120 kilometers an hour.