European toll at 80 as hellish weather harms monuments

The death toll from the worst storms to hit Europe since records began moved to more than 80 yesterday, with France in particular…

The death toll from the worst storms to hit Europe since records began moved to more than 80 yesterday, with France in particular left counting the enormous cost to its cultural treasures.

Hurricane-force winds swept across France, Germany, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Spain on Sunday with devastating force.

France braced last night for a new storm, which, the weather service warned, would hit the south, with snow likely.

The death toll across Europe had earlier risen to 80 yesterday: in France, 38 people died, according to interior ministry figures. More than one million people remained without electricity in France and there were widespread power cuts in Germany and Switzerland.

READ MORE

In France, emergency services were still battling to clear roads blocked by trees ripped down by winds of more than 200 k.p.h. Train services in and out of Paris were badly disrupted.

The list of damaged buildings reads like an A-Z of the French capital's historic buildings: the Versailles chateau, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Pantheon and the Sainte Chapelle.

An estimated 10,000 trees were blown down in the grounds of Versailles, including one planted by Napoleon.

Major renovation work will be needed at the Gothic Notre Dame Cathedral, where four small spires were blown off the roof and part of the northern vestry collapsed.

At Sainte Chapelle, on the Ile de la Cite, considered one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture, the top of the northern spire blew off onto a priceless Genoese stained glass window.

Six other historic churches in Paris were damaged, and around 150,000 trees - half the total - were uprooted in the Bois de Vincennes and Bois de Boulogne.

Strong winds also disrupted the clean-up of oil slicks along the western French coast from the sunken tanker, Erika.

At least 17 people died and hundreds were hurt in Germany, 11 of them in the south-western region of Baden Wurttemberg.

Germany also suffered widespread power cuts and the damage ran into hundreds of millions of German marks, officials said.

Snow-blocked roads were closed in Switzerland, where, police said, 11 people died in the storm. Emergency services and volunteers battled to get through snowdrifts to reach isolated villages in the northern canton of Jura.

In the Italian Alps, three people were killed, one person was missing and another badly injured after an avalanche near the village of Brusa, in the Argentera valley, on Sunday afternoon, police said. Rescue services were only alerted overnight when parents did not see the five return home.

In Austria, 48 Latin-American pilgrims on their way to Rome were injured when their double-decker bus overturned on an icy road near Innsbruck overnight.

On Sunday, 20 British tourists were injured when their bus slid off the road in the Austrian Tyrol. Both buses were using summer tyres, without chains.

The bad weather continued in southern Europe, where winds were still gusting at up to 135 k.p.h Eight people died in Britain. One sailor was missing off Scotland and another in the Channel, while a third was fatally injured off the Scilly isles. In Spain, two people were killed in the north-western city of Oviedo when a wall fell on them.

A man escaped from a blaze at a hunting cabin in central Sweden but froze to death as he fled, naked, on a snowmobile. Aftonbladet newspaper said the man failed to save any of his clothes after the fire broke out in the cabin. He was found dead on his snowmobile on Sunday, about 4 km from the burnt-out cabin.