Storms: around 26,000 homes without electricity in the South West

2023-07-08 09:24:25

Some 26,000 homes in the South West of France were without electricity on Saturday morning following violent storms which hit the area on Friday evening, we learned from Enedis.

In total, eight departments were still affected on Saturday around 10:00 a.m. by the cuts, the most affected being the Gers (10,000 households) and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (6,500), detailed for AFP Nicolas Desmalades, spokesperson for Enedis.

The other departments, he continued, were Hautes-Pyrénées (2,500), Haute-Garonne (2,000), Lot-et-Garonne (2,000), Landes (1,000), Dordogne (1,000) as well than Lot and Tarn-et-Garonne (1,000 for both).

“Currently, it is difficult to give recovery times, we are still in the inventory and the analysis of breakdowns to see exactly what there is to do as repairs”, affirmed Mr. Desmalades, qualifying the stormy episode of “significant”.

Enedis teams from other French regions have been called in to reinforce local staff, he said, the cuts being mainly caused by trees or branches falling on electric cables.

It is also a tree fall on a vehicle which injured a 65-year-old man in Pau in Béarn, the man having to be extricated by the emergency services around 7:15 p.m., we learned from the firefighters. Polytraumatized and in serious condition, he was still hospitalized on Saturday morning, according to the prefecture.

The rains and strong winds gave rise to some 120 firefighter interventions in the Gers, the most affected department, according to the department’s prefecture. Several roads were cut there, while in other areas of the southwest, train traffic might be disrupted.

In anticipation of bad weather, outdoor events had been canceled on Friday evening, such as the Pause Guitare festival in Albi (Tarn) where spectators were evacuated while trumpet player Ibrahim Maalouf was to go on stage, according to a correspondent from the AFP.

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