75,000 households without power
Storm tears through Brittany and Normandy and public warned to avoid beaches and forests
AROUND 75,000 households were left without electricity this morning after a night of violent storms and winds that forced Calais-Dover ferries to shelter in port this morning.
The north-western departments of Côtes-d'Armor, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Morbihan in Brittany and Loire-Atlantique in Pays-de-la-Loire bore the brunt of the night’s storm which was caused by a depression over the Channel. There were widespread reports of roads closed by fallen trees and damage to buildings, but no one was reported injured.
This morning the worst of the weather veered north-east to Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, which has been placed on orange alert by Météo-France.
In all, 35,000 households in Normandy, 30,000 in Brittany and 10,000 in Nord-Pas-de-Calais were without power this morning and engineers from ERDF were working to get them reconnected.
The storm front now stretches from Poitou-Charentes and northern Aquitaine to the Ardennes and, while the winds have eased on the Brittany coast, they are reaching up to 130kph along the Channel.
Residents have been warned to stay clear of the shoreline on the western coast due to the danger from high seas and to avoid walking in woods where many branches have been snapped off.
In England, which had been braced for the worst storm in a decade, a 14-year-old boy was reported missing after being swept away by waves on a beach in Newhaven, west Sussex. Up to 40,000 homes are also without electricity.
Road, rail and air transport has been heavily affected, with many trains cancelled or delayed during this morning’s rush hour – up to 40 of them because of trees fallen on the line - around 130 flights cancelled at Heathrow and roads flooded in Wales and the south-west with both Severn bridges being closed.
