Un deadly storm. Six people died this Thursday, August 18, during violent storms that hit Corsica. A 13-year-old girl died and another person was seriously injured on Thursday morning August 18 when a tree fell on their bungalow at a campsite in Sagone (Corse-du-Sud), the authorities said. firefighters at Agence France-Presse and the island’s prefecture.
In addition, another person died in Coggia (western facade of Corsica), “when the roof of a straw hut fell on his vehicle”, announced the prefecture. The second victim was 72 years old. A third person also died, a 46-year-old French tourist. He was the victim of a tree falling on his bungalow, according to information collected by AFP. A 23-year-old Italian is, in absolute urgency, also the victim of the fall of a tree in the same pine forest of Calvi, we learned from the same source. Arrived on the spot at the end of the afternoon, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced a new provisional toll of 6 dead and 20 injured.
New weather alert
At the start of the afternoon, the maritime prefecture announced two additional deaths. It is a fisherman and a kayaker. The body of a 62-year-old fisherman, of whom we had no news, was found in the morning, in the Gulf of Girolata (Corse-du-Sud). At Erbalunga (Haute-Corse), in Cap Corse, the lifeless body of the kayaker, for whom the alert had been given by her husband, who had managed to take shelter, was located in the early afternoon by aerial means. “The body has just been recovered at sea,” added the spokesperson, also counting “a dozen injured” on board different boats.
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“I give all my support to the Corsicans who faced violent storms, with gusts of wind at more than 200 km / h. There are already three people dead and several injured. Significant resources are committed. I will go there this afternoon,” said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, on Twitter. At 4 p.m., Météo-France again placed the island of beauty on orange alert for storms and floods, for the evening and the night. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced that it was activating the interministerial crisis unit to follow “closely the operations that take place on land and at sea”. This will be chaired this Thursday evening by Emmanuel Macron from Fort Brégançon, announced the Elysée.
This Thursday afternoon, the prefecture of Corse-du-Sud published a decree in order to evacuate “all the occupants accommodated in light reception structures of all the campsites located in the department”. Following the bad weather, “operators of campsites located in the department of Corse-du-Sud must immediately evacuate occupants accommodated in light structures sensitive to the winds”, specifies the decree.
45,000 homes without electricity
In parallel with the damage and human consequences, the French energy company EDF indicates that “nearly 45,000 customers are affected by power cuts, mainly in the north-west area of the island”, in a press release published this Thursday in mid morning. According to information from the electricity operator, it is mainly homes located north of “the Ajaccio-Bastia axis” that are affected. While the meteorological event should end in the next few minutes, EDF ensures that its agents are “from now on mobilized to establish an initial diagnosis”, in conjunction with the manager of the Enedis electricity network.
Corsica was placed Thursday morning and until 11 am in orange vigilance by Météo-France, which had announced “strong storms in progress on the west coast with very strong gusts”. “An exceptional gust at 224 km/h has just been measured at the Marignana station [à une trentaine de kilomètres de Sagone, NDLR] on an exposed part of the west coast” of the island, Météo-France announced on its Twitter account at 8:30 a.m.