Three dead, many without power after storm lashes France and Spain

PARIS – Three people have died in weather-related accidents in France and Spain after a storm tore through the region, officials said on Feb 13, with the tempest ripping up trees, flooding roads and leaving thousands without power.

High winds and hard rain forced

cancellations of flights, trains and ferries

on Feb 12 and brought chaos to roads in southern France, northern Spain and parts of Portugal.

Spanish officials said a woman died after the roof of an industrial warehouse collapsed on her, while French officials confirmed on Feb 13 that a person died after falling from a ladder in their garden, a day after a lorry driver was killed when a tree smashed through his windscreen.

Dozens more were also injured in weather-related incidents in Spain, and a viaduct in Portugal partially collapsed because of flooding.

French forecasters said the storm, named Nils, was “unusually strong” and France’s electricity distributor said it had mobilised around 3,000 workers as it battled to reconnect households to the grid.

“Enedis has restored service to 50 per cent of the 900,000 customers who were without electricity,” it wrote at around 6am local time.

“Flooding complicates repairs because the fields are waterlogged and some roads are blocked,” said Enedis crisis director Herve Champenois at a press briefing on Feb 12.

Residents across the south of France were shocked at the storm’s ferocity.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ingrid, a florist in the city of Perpignan, told AFP. “A tree almost fell on my car – two seconds more and it would have.”

Ms Eugenie Ferrier, 32, from the village of Roaillan near Bordeaux in the south-west, said: “During the night, you could hear tiles lifting, rubbish bins rolling down the street – it was crazy.”

Forecasters said the storm had moved eastwards away from French territory on Feb 12, though some areas were still on the alert for flooding. AFP