Storm Elsa continues to flood rivers across France, Spain and Portugal, bringing down power lines and disrupted rail and air communication. The storm has already taken the lives of eight people, The Local Spain reported on Saturday.
The number of fatalities from a storm Elsa that battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to eight on Saturday. The region suffers from even more violent winds and heavy rain, the meteorologists say.
On Saturday, the victim off Elsa became a 32-year-old South Korean woman, the Madrid region’s interior minister confirmed. She died Saturday, a day after being struck on the head by falling debris from a building in Spain’s capital.
In Granada, a man died after his car was swept away by a swollen river near while the 68-year-old tourist from the Netherlands went missing while windsurfing in rough weather in Huelva province Friday. According to Andalusia emergency service, he had drowned on Friday.
Those three deaths bring to eight to the number of fatalities from the storm that has battered the south of Europe overnight Thursday to Friday. Six of the deaths have been in Spain and two in Portugal.
Elsa disrupts the rail, ferry boat and air communication
Elsa flooded rivers and disrupted rail and air travel across the region. Some 8,000 households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by the wind. As a weakened natural disaster moved over Britain, the authorities in France, Portugal and Spain all warned of a fresh threat because the region would still be buffeted by gusts of up to 90 km per hour.
Many public places in Spain, France and Portugal remained shut Saturday because of the strong winds. France’s weather office placed 15 regions in the southwest of the country on orange alert Saturday, as the storm-battered its Atlantic coast.
Officials on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica have closed all the island’s airports Sunday because of the approaching storm. Ferry services to the mainline have also been suspended.
