Death toll
rises to eight as Storm Elsa wreaks havoc across Europe
Region
braces for more strong winds and heavy rain as storm hits Spain, Portugal and
France
Agence
France-Presse
Sat 21 Dec
2019 19.22 GMTLast modified on Sat 21 Dec 2019 22.47 GMT
The death
toll from a storm that battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to eight on
Saturday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.
A
32-year-old South Korean woman died Saturday, a day after being struck on the
head by falling debris from a building in central Madrid, Spain’s regional
interior minister said.
The
building had passed an inspection in 2015 “but weather like this, with heavy
rain and wind, causes these fateful cases”, Enrique Lopez told reporters.
A man died
Saturday after his car was swept away by a swollen river near the town of
Huéscar in the southern province of Granada, the regional government of
Andalusia said in a statement.
Emergency
services in Andalusia said a 68-year-old Dutch man who went missing while
windsurfing in rough weather in Huelva province Friday had drowned.
Those three
deaths bring to eight the number of fatalities from the storm that has battered
Spain, Portugal and southern France overnight Thursday to Friday.
Storm Elsa
flooded rivers, brought down power lines and disrupted rail and air travel
across the region.
Six of the
deaths have been in Spain and two in Portugal, where the extreme weather
interrupted train services Saturday between the capital Lisbon and the second
city Porto due to flooding on the rail tracks.
As a
weakened Storm Elsa moved over Britain, the authorities in France, Portugal and
Spain all warned of a fresh threat.
Storm
Fabien has already brought winds of 105mph (170kmh) per hour in Galicia in
northwestern Spain, forcing the cancellation of 14 flights according to Spanish
airport operator Aena.
Another 13
flights were diverted from airports in Galicia to other parts of Spain or
Portugal, it added.
Some 8,000
households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by
the wind, local officials said.
Spain’s
national weather office has put the entire coast of Galicia and the
neighbouring region of Asturias on red alert on Saturday – the highest in its
four-tiered alert scale – due to strong winds and high waves.
Eight
Madrid city parks remained shut Saturday because of the strong winds.
Parks and
cemeteries were also closed in Bordeaux in southwestern France on Saturday
while the Arlette Gruss circus, which had set up in a big tent in the city’s
main square, cancelled three performances.
France’s
weather office placed 14 regions in the southwest of the country on orange
alert earlier Saturday, as the storm battered its Atlantic coast.
The winds
were as high as 148kmh at Socoa, on the southwest Atlantic coast near the
border with Spain. Even up on the northwest coast of Brittany, winds reached up
to 120kmh.
France’s
SNCF rail network cancelled services between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Hendaye
services in the southwest because of the likelihood of winds blowing trees down
on to the line.
Officials
on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica have closed all the island’s
airports Sunday because of the approaching storm. Ferry services to the
mainline have also been suspended.
And
officials on the island closed the roads into Ajaccio to try to prevent anyone
getting caught in flood waters.
Nearly
10,000 homes are still without power in the southeast Rhône-Alpes region after
storms overnight Thursday to Friday.
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