(Sagone) Violent storms battered the French Mediterranean after weeks of drought, Météo-France, Météo-France on Thursday, warned that storms and “watersheds” at night would pose new risks.
Posted at 6:50 am.
Updated at 12:37 p.m.
The Mediterranean island, whose tourist season is in full swing, will again be on orange alert from 9pm to 10am on Friday.
Given the situation on the beauty island, Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne announced the activation of the Interim Crisis Unit. For its part, the province of Corse-du-Sud has demanded that those staying in camps, particularly tents, be evacuated without delay in “light structures sensitive to winds”.
The brutal thunderstorms, with wind gusts of up to 200 km/h in places, killed five people on the island.
Admitting it was “surprised” by an “exceptional” situation and “difficult to predict” with its digital models, Météo-France however defended itself by not activating its orange alert early Thursday morning.
Christophe Morel, head of the forecasting office, declared during a press conference that if a warning is needed as soon as an extreme situation appears in the numerical forecast, “we will be very alert, and the system will become ineffective,” announcing at a press conference: “There is a balance to be found, to warn sufficiently and to be more Do not warn.
Those who died at sea were a 62-year-old fisherman from the Gulf of Girolata (Corse-du-Sud) and a kayaker in his sixties from Erbalunga (Haute-Corse). told AFP.
By the end of the morning, the province of Haut-Cours had already announced the death of a 46-year-old man in Calvi (Haut-Cours), the victim of a tree falling on his bungalow. A tree fell on a 13-year-old girl’s bungalow at a camp in the village of Sacon in Cours-du-Sude.
The last victim, a 72-year-old woman, died after the roof of a thatched cottage fell on her vehicle on Liamon Beach in Cogeia, Cours-du-Château.
Shortly after a terrible thunderstorm in the morning, tourists left Sakon camp with their suitcases and bags, many shocked, an AFP photographer noted.
An Italian woman says she wants to light a candle to thank God for saving her life: a tree fell two meters from her tent.
A total of 12 people were injured on the ground across the island, including three in an absolute emergency. Among them, a 23-year-old Italian woman was killed by a falling tree in the Calvi pine forest.
“The Wrecked Boat”
In Chacon Bay, Benjamin Roux, 26, told AFP he “woke up at 7:30 a.m. to a very big storm,” which knocked out electricity and phone networks.
The tourist, who was out for a dive on Thursday morning, went to Liamon Beach, where the septuagenarian lost his life, and rescued “people in a boat that ran aground on the beach”.
According to him, the five passengers slept on the boat 200 meters from the shore, but “they did not see the sea surge”: “They managed to get out unscathed. They perished”.
According to a press release from the Maritime Prefecture, 125 rescue operations at sea were carried out during the day in Corsica, most of which involved “vessels at sea in distress, or broken anchors that may have thrown them ashore, or ‘they were already at sea and found themselves disabled or damaged’.
“The first estimate of these incidents is currently ten minor injuries, most of them following falls or shocks in their boats overboard”, according to the same source.
At the request of President Emmanuel Macron, Interior Minister Gérald Dormanin, who arrived in Corsica around 6 p.m., immediately went to the Chacon camp area.
Earlier in the day, the head of state showed “all support” to President Gilles Simeone of the Corsican administration.
Heavy thunderstorms lashed southeastern France on Tuesday and Wednesday, putting many sectors on orange alert, but damage on the continent was minimal despite up to 123 millimeters of rain in Laroux. A village in Herald.
In Italy, on the other hand, two people died, eighteen were injured and hundreds were evacuated on Thursday after the storm tore down trees and roofs in Tuscany.
