Emergency crews on Saturday battled to restore power to more than 1 million homes and businesses a day after Storm Eunice carved a deadly trail across northwest Europe and left transport networks in disarray.
At least 16 people were killed by falling trees and flying debris caused by the fierce winds in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK, emergency services said.
Train operators in the UK urged people not to travel, after most of the network was shut down when Eunice brought the strongest wind gust recorded in England — 196kph.
Photo: AFP
In Brentwood, east of London, a 400-year-old tree crashed into a house where Sven Good was working from home, as millions of other Britons heeded government advice to stay indoors.
“I could feel the whole roof going above me. It was absolutely terrifying,” Good, 23, told Sky News, adding that none of the occupants were injured.
The train network in the Netherlands was paralyzed, with no Eurostar and Thalys international services running from France and the UK because overhead power lines had been damaged.
France and Ireland were also grappling with rail disruption and power cuts, and Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn said that more than 1,000km of track had been damaged.
Poland still had 1.2 million customers without electricity on Saturday afternoon, officials said, after the country’s northwest took a battering.
“I appeal to you: Please stay at home!” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Facebook.
“We are constantly monitoring the situation and the appropriate services are at work. The fire brigade has already intervened more than 12,000 times,” he wrote.
In the UK, 226,000 homes and businesses still had no power, but 1.2 million others were reconnected.
The death toll so far includes four each in the Netherlands and Poland; three in the UK, two dead each in Belgium and Germany, and one in Ireland.
About 30 people in northern France were hurt in storm-related road accidents, and in the Netherlands, dozens of people have to be evacuated from their homes because of fears that a church’s clock tower might collapse.
Eunice sparked the first-ever “red” weather warning for London on Friday. It was one of the most powerful tempests in Europe since the “Great Storm” hit Britain and northern France in 1987.
Scientists said that both storms packed a “sting jet,” a rarely seen meteorological phenomenon borne out of an unusual confluence of pressure systems in the Atlantic that magnified the effects of Eunice.
The Met Office, Britain’s meteorological service, on Saturday issued a less severe “yellow” wind warning for much of the south coast of England and South Wales, which it said “could hamper recovery efforts from Storm Eunice.”
Based on repairs from previous storms, the UK’s total bill for damage could exceed ￡300 million (US$407.83 million), the Association of British Insurers said.
At the storm’s height, planes struggled to land in ferocious winds, as documented by the YouTube channel Big Jet TV, which streamed the attempts from London’s Heathrow Airport.
Hundreds of other flights were canceled or delayed at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
A section of the roof on London’s O2 Arena was also shredded.
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