France: Storm Ciaran causes two deaths and significant damage

PARIS (Reuters) – Storm Ciaran finished evacuating towards the north of France on Thursday evening, still blowing strong gusts on the Channel coast in Hauts-de-France, after causing severe gusts during the night. significant damage in Brittany and Normandy, as well as the death of two people.

The authorities announced the death of a truck driver whose truck hit a tree in the Aisne department, although spared from the most violent winds. In Normandy, a septuagenarian died after falling from his balcony due to a gust of wind, the Le Havre prosecutor’s office said in a press release.

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, also reported at the beginning of the afternoon 16 injured, including 7 firefighters, during a situation update.

Only three departments, Somme, Pas-de-Calais and Nord, were still on orange alert for strong winds at the end of the day, but many departments remained on yellow alert for flooding, flooding or submersion, including on the coast. Atlantic and Corsica.

The number of households without electricity decreased from 1.2 million on Thursday morning to 684,000 just before 7:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), according to Enedis, the electricity distribution network manager. Two-thirds of homes still plunged into darkness are in Brittany, which experienced record winds overnight, and the rest in Normandy.

More than a million people have been deprived of a mobile network, wrote on the X platform (formerly Twitter) the Minister for Digital Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot.

Violent gusts were recorded during the night, notably in the three departments placed on red alert (Finistère, Côtes d’Armor and Manche), indicated the meteorological service which noted “exceptional wind gusts over Brittany” and “absolute records” broken in Finistère.

Gérald Darmanin reported “winds of more than 200 km/h sometimes measured at Pointe du Raz”, in Finistère.

At the height of the storm, half of the homes in Finistère were deprived of electricity, said the prefect of the department, Alain Espinasse, on RTL.

TRANSPORT DISRUPTIONS

On the transport side, disruptions are still expected on Friday on certain TER lines in Brittany and Normandy, but also in the South-West where another disruption, less powerful, is expected in the coming hours, declared the Minister of Transport. , Clément Beaune, during a press conference.

In Finistère, the general traffic ban taken early in the morning is gradually being relaxed, the prefecture indicates in a press release.

“Public transport traffic (excluding urban transport) and heavy goods vehicles (excluding live animals and the transport of milk) remains prohibited at this stage throughout the territory,” she said.

Northern Europe was also affected by the passage of storm Ciaran and its violent winds which disrupted road, rail and air transport.

Falling trees killed two people in Ghent, Belgium, and another in the south of the Netherlands, local emergency services and police said. One of the victims in Ghent was a five-year-old child, the Belga news agency reported.

In southern England, many schools remained closed on Thursday and authorities urged residents to avoid traveling to the coast.

Dutch airline KLM announced it had canceled hundreds of flights to and from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol due to the storm.

In Spain, where red alerts were issued by AEMET, the national meteorological institute, in the regions of Galicia and Cantabria, a woman lost her life in Madrid due to falling trees.

Dozens of flights were also canceled in several Spanish cities, including the capital Madrid, airport operator AENA announced.

(Writing by Camille Raynaud, Zhifan Liu and Kate Entringer, with Kate Holton in London, editing by Tangi Salaün)