Ajaccio, France | Violent storms that have hit the Mediterranean arc since Tuesday have killed five people and injured more than twenty, including three seriously, Thursday, in Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean, according to a new report from the authorities.
Following hot weather and drought, brutal storms and gusts of wind up to a peak of 224 kilometers per hour on Thursday also caused material damage and required numerous rescue operations at sea.
On land, three people, aged 13 to 72, were killed by falling trees or roofs. A dozen people were also injured. Three are in very serious condition, including a 23-year-old Italian woman.
At sea, two people also perished: a 62-year-old fisherman and a kayaker, whose bodies were recovered. A dozen injured were counted on board different boats, according to the maritime prefecture.
Dozens of interventions took place on Thursday “for groundings, overturned or sinking boats, whose mooring broke,” the maritime prefecture had previously indicated.
In addition, 35,000 customers were still without power on the island, a spokesperson for the electrician EDF told AFP, after the restoration of service for 10,000 customers.
The storms left the island to move towards Italy at the end of the morning, specified Météo-France which lifted the alert in force since the morning.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, strong thunderstorms accompanied by sustained rain hit the south/south-east of France, several departments of which had been placed on alert until Wednesday evening.
The damage was limited, even if the amounts of rain were significant – up to 123 millimeters recorded in Lauroux, a village about sixty kilometers from Montpellier, according to Météo-France.