Steph Deschamps / August 19, 2022
Five people died and many injured, here are the results of the violent storms that hit Corsica since this morning
Corsica was placed Thursday morning and until 11:00 am in orange vigilance by Meteo-France, which had announced strong thunderstorms underway on the west coast with very strong gusts.
An exceptional gust of 224 km/h has just been measured at the station of Marignana (editor's note: about thirty kilometers from Sagone) on an exposed part of the west coast of the island, had announced Météo France on its Twitter account at 08h30.
At midday the death toll was 3, it is now 5. The deaths of a fisherman in Girolata (Corse-du-Sud) and a kayaker in Erbalunga (Haute-Corse) are in addition to those of a 46-year-old man in Calvi (Haute-Corse), victim of a falling tree on his bungalow. In Corse-du-Sud, a 13-year-old girl, hit by a falling tree, and a 72-year-old woman, by the fall of a straw hut roof, also lost their lives. Twelve other people were injured, two of them in absolute emergency.
Shortly after the deadly storm, tourists were leaving the campsite with their suitcases and bags, many in a state of shock, an AFP photographer noted. An Italian woman said she wanted to place a candle to thank God for her life: a tree fell just two meters from her tent.
In the Gulf of Sagone, Benjamin Roux, 26 years old, told AFP that he was woken up around 7:30 a.m. by a very big storm, which cut off the electricity and the telephone network. This tourist had to dive Thursday morning and the instructor had not at all foreseen this storm. He went to the beach of Liamone, where the septuagenarian lost her life, and helped people on a boat that ran aground and dislocated on the beach. The five occupants were sleeping on the boat 200 meters from the beach according to him, they did not see the sea rise. They managed to get out without injury. They are devastated. Several rescue operations at sea were still underway Thursday along the west coast.
A large majority of these operations are for groundings, overturned boats or in distress, whose anchorage has broken, according to a spokesman for the maritime prefecture, which deplored a dozen injuries on board various boats but without vital prognosis engaged.
In neighboring Italy, two people died Thursday and eighteen injured and a hundred evacuated, during a storm that tore down trees and roofs in Tuscany, said the Italian region. The two people who died were victims of falling trees, according to local media.
Corsica will be again in orange alert for the night from Thursday to Friday.