Heavy thunderstorms lashed France the day before yesterday, killing one person and injuring 15 others, two of whom are in critical condition, officials said.
A mayor’s office sources told AFP that a woman in her thirties was beaten and trapped under a car in Rouen.
Interior Minister Gerald Thurman told reporters yesterday that the storms “injured 15 people, two of whom were in critical condition,” one of whom was a 13-year-old boy “in critical condition.”
He pointed out that this vast part of the country had seen storms simultaneously “for the first time in 20 years”.
Yesterday afternoon, with 7,000 homes without electricity, that number reached 20,000. The director of “Enedes” for low- and medium-voltage electricity networks in France expected electricity to return to homes without electricity in the evening.
Among the recorded damages, Dharmanan listed “works of art”, especially those that had been “blown away” in the Mayan (western) bridges and vineyards, especially in the Land and Dijer (southwestern) areas.
In some areas wind speeds exceeded 100 kilometers per hour.
In the southwest, vineyards and local officials told the AFP that hailstones several centimeters in diameter had fallen in an area of Armenia region famous for its French white wine.
“We estimate there are between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares of affected vineyards, and tens of thousands of hectares of crops have been affected,” said Bernard Malabrett, chairman of the provincial chamber of agriculture.
He pointed out that hailstones about three centimeters in diameter caused severe damage in the western part of the province.
Lightning has been reported around the French capital, Brittany and Normandy (west), Val de Lower (center) and Ile de France.
Amateur photographers have posted photos of lightning strikes on top of the Eiffel Tower in the capital on social media.
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