Thursday 4th January, 21 departments are still placed in orange alert due to Eleanor storm, which left one dead and 29 wounded in France.
One dead, 29 injured, four seriously, 35,000 without electricity households. The Eleanor storm reached in the night from Wednesday 3 to Thursday, 4 January the southern half of France with strong winds and a maximum risk of avalanches in the Alps.
The Mont-Blanc, Beaufortain, Vanoise, Haute Tarentaise, Haute Maurienne to Thabord, Pelvoux and Champsor were placed on alert 5, maximum level on the scale of risk, in full school holidays, Meteo France said in its latest bulletin.
Closed Ski areas
“We have all the cocktail for avalanches, landslides and floods,” said a firefighter Haute-Savoie. Castings have already isolated the village of La Grave in the Hautes-Alpes.
In Haute-Savoie, a 21 year old skier was killed Wednesday by a falling tree on a track of Morillon.
In Chamonix, Avoriaz or Val d’Isere, like in Switzerland, most of the ski areas in the Northern Alps remained closed Wednesday. “The goal is to put all the security world, customers such as personal and preserve the material,” said Wednesday AFP the president of the section of Savoie ski areas of France, David Ponson.
Wind gusts reached 250 km/h at Arcs 2000 and “coupled with the rain, it did a lot of damage,” he said.
Some access to the stations were closed for the night. Including that of Val Thorens (Savoy), the highest ski resort, where the road will remain closed Thursday morning to practice for preventive avalanche triggering.
Twenty-one departments were still Thursday morning orange alert for wind, rain, flood, waves, flooding and avalanches, said Meteo France. The end of the event is scheduled for Friday at 6am.
The wind orange alert has instead had risen on Corsica where on the night of Wednesday to Thursday gusts to 123 km / h at Cape Corsica, 140 km / h at Cape Sagro, 129 km / h at Ile Rousse, were recorded and the Alpes-Maritimes and Var. In the Alpes-Maritimes, gusts to 164 km / h Saint-Cézaire and 130 km / h were recorded Caussols.
Fires in Corsica
Three people were injured in fires that could not all be completely controlled because of winds, said the prefecture of Haute-Corse in the Wednesday and Thursday night.
Approximately 11,000 homes were without power Thursday at 6:00 in Corsica , according to a final point of EDF responsible for distribution on the island. “The fire slowed the work of some 150 people mobilized,” said AFP EDF’s press service.
Wednesday night, the Interior Ministry has reported four people “seriously injured” and 22 “slightly more” during the passage of the storm, the fourth of the season, which caused extensive damage and required some 6,450 interventions firefighters.
The four seriously injured are a fallen man from his roof in Seine-et-Marne, a woman hit by a cement block in the Upper Rhine, a biker who hit a tree in Eure-et-Loir and a motorist injured by falling tree in Essonne.
