LONDON – A man was killed after a tree fell on a caravan in England after record winds brought by Storm Goretti, as 100,000 homes in France were still without power on Saturday.
Some 15 people have died in weather-related accidents this week across Europe as gale-force winds and storms caused travel mayhem, shut schools, and cut power to hundreds of thousands in freezing temperatures.
The storm barrelled through southwestern Cornwall and parts of Wales overnight Thursday to Friday, with gusts of up to 160 kilometres per hour (100 miles per hour) downing trees and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power.
A man was found dead in the town of Helston in Cornwall on Friday after a tree fell onto a caravan, UK police said.
“Tragically, a man aged in his 50s was located deceased within the caravan,” Devon and Cornwall police said in a statement.
Most of the UK remains under a weather warning for snow and ice on Saturday, the Met Office national weather agency said, warning that black ice could cause “disruption” in Scotland and northern England.
Heavy snowfall followed by the storm meant that some 250 schools in Scotland were closed for the much of the first week back after the Christmas break.
Around 28,000 homes were still without power at the start of the weekend in southwestern England and the Midlands, according to the network operator National Grid.
Storm Goretti also ploughed through other parts of northern Europe, with nearly 100,000 homes in France still without power on Saturday morning.
Meanwhile long-distance rail traffic slowly resumed on Saturday in northern Germany, after being completely suspended on Friday due to another storm named Elli, rail opetaor Deutsche Bahn said.
In the far north of the country, the port city of Hamburg, heavily affected by a large amount of snow, remains particularly impacted by the disruptions, it added.
A number of rail services will still not be restored on Saturday, notably those linking Hamburg to Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Hanover.
Services from Hamburg to the western Ruhr region or to Berlin are expected to be restored over the course of Saturday, it said. – AFP
