The death toll from a storm that battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to eight on Saturday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.
A 32-year-old South Korean woman died on Saturday, a day after being struck on the head by falling debris from a building in central Madrid, Community of Madrid Minister of the Interior Enrique Lopez said.
The building had passed an inspection in 2015, “but weather like this, with heavy rain and wind, causes these fateful cases,” Lopez told reporters.
Photo: EPA-EFE
A man died on Saturday after his car was swept away by a swollen river near the town of Huescar in the southern province of Granada, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.
Emergency services in Andalusia said a 68-year-old Dutch man who went missing while windsurfing in rough weather in Huelva Province on Friday had drowned.
Those three deaths brought to eight to the number of fatalities from the storm that has battered Spain, Portugal and southern France overnight Thursday to Friday.
Storm Elsa flooded rivers, brought down power lines and disrupted rail and air travel across the region.
Six of the deaths have been in Spain and two in Portugal, where the extreme weather interrupted train services on Saturday between the capital, Lisbon, and the second city, Porto, due to flooding on the rail tracks.
As a weakened Elsa moved over the UK, the authorities in France, Portugal and Spain all warned of a fresh threat.
Storm Fabien has already brought winds of 170kph in Galicia in northwestern Spain, forcing the cancelation of 14 flights, according to Spanish airport operator Aena SME.
Another 13 flights were diverted from airports in Galicia to other parts of Spain or Portugal, it added.
About 8,000 households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by the wind, local officials said.
The Spanish State Meteorological Agency has put the entire coast of Galicia and the neighboring region of Asturias on red alert on Saturday — the highest on its four-tier scale — due to strong winds and high waves.
Eight Madrid city parks remained shut because of the strong winds.
Parks and cemeteries were also closed in Bordeaux in southwestern France, while the Arlette Gruss circus, which had set up in a big tent in the city’s main square, canceled three performances.
The French weather office placed 15 regions in the southwest of the country on orange alert as the storm battered its Atlantic coast.
Wind speeds were as high as 148kph at Socoa, in the southwest near the border with Spain. Even on the northwest coast of Brittany, winds reached up to 120kph.
The office said winds in the southwest would likely weaken through yesterday, but the region would still be buffeted by gusts of up to 90kph.
France’s SNCF rail network canceled services between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Hendaye in the southwest because of the likelihood of winds blowing trees down on to the lines.
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