Deadly storm lashes Spain, Portugal and France

by stejeb | February 28, 2010 at 03:31 am

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We were issued with flood warnings across parts of the UK in the last few days, some place have already been hit by torrential rain, and of course there's worse to come.

I can see now the likely direction to watch, storms have swept up from Portugal, across Spain and the Bay of Biscay into France, causing wind damage, flooding and 10 deaths reported so far, from drowning, falling trees and a falling wall.

This one forecast to head up across to Denmark, there's a few more places going to get hit before it reaches there, I hope people are preparing themselves for it.

At least nine people have been killed in storms that have lashed parts of Spain, Portugal and France.

Winds of up to 140km/h (87mph) caused chaos as they moved from Portugal up through the Bay of Biscay.

Five people are reported to have been killed in France, three in Spain and a 10-year-old boy in Portugal.

The storm is expected to track north-eastwards during the course of Sunday, reaching Denmark by the evening, French meteorological authorities said.

Falling trees

The storm, which has been called Xynthia, has put five of the 95 French departments on red alert - only the second such warning since the new emergency system was introduced in 2001.

Hundreds of thousands of homes in west and south-west France have lost electricity while a number of French coastal villages were flooded.

Some people had taken to their roofs in the Vendee region, one policeman told the Agence France-Presse news agency by telephone.

Three people drowned in Vendee, while an 88-year-old woman also drowned in Charentes-Maritime, police said.

The fifth French fatality was caused by a falling tree in the Pyrenees region.

A tree also claimed the lives of two Spanish men when their vehicle was hit and a Spanish woman aged 82 was killed by a falling wall in Galicia.

The Portuguese boy was also killed by a tree.