updates homes without electricity, start of Storm Franklin
LILLE (awp / afp) – The north of France faced storm Franklin on Sunday evening, two days after the passage of Eunice, which caused significant damage and still left some 12,000 homes without electricity.
Again classified in orange vigilance with strong winds until Monday 1:00 a.m., the North, Pas-de-Calais, Somme and Seine-Maritime are hit by a “new stormy episode circulating quickly, of less intensity than the recent storm + Eunice +, however requiring special vigilance”, according to Météo-France.
This new storm, named Franklin by the Irish meteorological service, was to be marked by the movement from west to east of a “narrow but intense band of rain”, accompanied by gusts which could “reach 100 to 120 km / h and locally exceed 130 km/h” and strong waves on the Channel coast.
The wind was expected to remain strong in the second part of the night “with coastal gusts of 90 to 110 km / h, very locally more than 120 km / h”.
Franklin hits departments where trees and infrastructure are already weakened by the passage Friday afternoon of storm Eunice, accompanied by very violent gusts, even inland.
Despite the efforts of Enedis, which mobilizes “more than 1,000 technicians and partner companies”, around 12,000 customers had still not been able to be supplied with electricity in Hauts-de-France on Sunday at the end of the day, out of the 170,000 customers concerned at the end of the day. stronger from storm Eunice.
The technicians work in “difficult conditions”, trees lying on the tracks preventing their good circulation, and the arrival Sunday evening of the new storm was to “slow down the replenishment operations in progress”, while risking causing new damage to the electrical network, underlines the operator.
On the rail side, TER connections were suspended on Sunday evening due to storm Franklin.
“Traffic will be interrupted, this Sunday, February 20, from 7 p.m. on the coast (Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk, Abbeville)”, warned on its Twitter account the Hauts-de-France TER network, which had been severely disrupted. until Saturday afternoon by the damage of Eunice. “Disruptions, deletions and delays” are also expected on Monday, February 21.
“On several lines on the northern side of the region, security reconnaissance will be carried out tomorrow (Monday) at the very beginning of the morning by the first TER trains of the day, without passengers. Drivers will be accompanied in some cases by logging teams” , we specify.
Also in Normandy, the SNCF has planned to interrupt traffic on several of its TER lines, in particular Rouen-Le Havre, Caen-Cherbourg and Lisieux-Trouville.
“Traffic will be interrupted from 10 p.m. tonight,” SNCF said in a tweet.
Some schools, such as the Boucher de Perthes high school in Abbeville (Somme), whose roof was damaged by the passage of Eunice, will also remain closed on Monday.
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