HUNDREDS OF FLIGHTS CANCELLED, ROADS AND TRAIN STATIONS CLOSED
A killer storm has caused chaos in Europe, killing at least 60 people and leaving hundreds more injured.
Called Xynthia, the low-pressure storm produced hurricane-force winds and was the kind of weather "one doesn’t see every year” according to forecaster Peter Hartmann from the German Weather Service (DWD).
A wind speed record was set in Spain, where weather experts have been referring to a “meteorological bomb”.
Gusts of 228 km/h were recorded on Saturday at around 9 pm in the Basque village of Orduña, beating the previous record of 213 km/h, measured in theBlack Forest during hurricane Lothar in 1999.
It was the strongest wind that had been recorded since the beginning of scientific weather observation at the end of the 19th century.
Six people have died in Germany. Stations and airports were closed while train lines were completely blocked off in some parts of the country.
A two-year-old boy was blown into the river Weschnitz by a gust of wind. He tragically drowned in the ice cold water.
And a BMW driver was forced off the road by a gale and hit a tree and died in Bückeburg in Lower Saxony.
In France, a million people are without electricity with wind speeds reaching up to 150 km/h on the coast, according to TV channel France-Info.
President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his sympathy to the relatives of the victims. The number of dead could rise, according to the authorities.
Many towns in the La Rochelle area suffered with floods up to 1.5 metres high. Air France flew only around 100 of the 700 scheduled flights from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Boulders fell onto the streets in the Pyrenees and the border to Spain was closed.
Xynthia first hit Portugal and northern Spain, killing four people and leaving 130,000 homes without power. Two people died in Spain as their car was hit by an uprooted tree and an 82-year-old woman was killed by a falling wall.
In northern Portugal, a ten-year-old boy was killed by a broken branch.
Bild.com
