The death toll from hurricane-force Storm Xaver sweeping across northern Europe rose to six yesterday when high winds hurled a tree limb against a car, killing three people, local emergency services said.
Xaver blasted into northern Europe on Thursday after disrupting transport and power in northern Britain and flooding east coast areas in what meteorologists said could prove the worst storm to hit the continent in years.
Two people were killed in Britain as winds reached speeds of 225kph. A truck driver died when his vehicle overturned and a man was killed by a falling tree.
In western Denmark, a 72-year-old female passenger of a truck died when the vehicle overturned in howling winds.
In Poland, three people died and one was injured in the town of Poraj when a tree limb was blown onto their car,” Piotr Cholajda at the state firefighting headquarters said.
He said high winds had downed electricity lines, leaving more than 100,000 people around the country without power.
The Polish Institute of Meteorology and Water Management forecast wind gusts of up to 110kph inland and up to 135kph off Poland’s Baltic seacoast.
Poland’s flagship airline LOT canceled some domestic and European flights yesterday due to “unexpected weather changes in Europe.”
Thousands of Britons evacuated from their homes on low-lying east coast areas on Thursday were warned of further woes for yesterday in the form of “exceptionally high tides” — the most serious tidal surge for more than 60 years.
Sea levels are higher in some areas than during devastating floods of 1953 that killed hundreds along the North Sea coast.
Speaking after an emergency government meeting yesterday, British Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said flood defenses strengthened since 1953 had protected more than 800,000 homes.
Almost 8,000 people remained without power in Scotland where 80,000 people lost electricity on Thursday, according to energy company SSE.
In Germany, about 4,000 people in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had no power yesterday, schools were closed and about 70 flights at Hamburg airport were canceled.
Officials said floodwaters in the northern German port city of Hamburg rose to 6.09m above normal levels yesterday, the highest level in decades. All 38 flood-gates in Hamburg were closed earlier yesterday.
A high-speed rail line running 300km between Germany’s two largest cities Hamburg and Berlin was blocked yesterday by debris on the tracks. Stranded passengers were transferred to buses, according to Deutsche Bahn officials.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
RSS