(Ajaccio) Violent storms that hit the Mediterranean arc since Tuesday left three dead and injured Thursday on the French island of Corsica, according to a report from the authorities.
Posted at 6:50 a.m.
Succeeding the high heat and drought, brutal storms and gusts of wind up to 224 kilometers / hour on Thursday also caused material damage and required numerous rescue operations at sea.
A 13-year-old girl was killed by a tree falling on her bungalow at a campsite in Sagone, in the west of the island. Nine people were also injured on this site, including one seriously injured, firefighters told AFP.
A 72-year-old woman died on a beach in Coggia, also in Corsica, after the roof of a straw hut fell on her vehicle, said the prefecture.
In the north of the island, a 46-year-old man also died, in Calvi, victim of a tree falling on his bungalow, while a 23-year-old woman, an Italian, was very seriously injured, also by the fall of a tree in the same pine forest. She was being transported to the hospital, in cardio-respiratory arrest, according to the prefecture of this department.
Dozens of interventions were also underway at sea, “for groundings, overturned or sinking boats, whose anchorage has broken,” a spokesman for the maritime prefecture told AFP.
In addition, 45,000 customers are without power throughout the island, announced the operator EDF Corse.
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-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 with up to 123 millimeters recorded in Lauroux, a village about sixty kilometers from Montpellier (South), according to Météo-France.