More than 40 people have been injured, of which 15 have had to be admitted to different hospitals, after the violent passage of a tornado that has also left two people missing since Monday afternoon in the town of Pomas, in the department of Aude, in the south of France.
Emergency teams are focusing the search for the missing among the debris of a collapsed house, according to sources from the investigation cited by the French network BFMTV. The Secretary General of the Prefecture of Aude, Emmanuelle Plantier-Lemarchand, has indicated to the same outlet that "the operations to clarify the doubts will continue throughout the night" with a large deployment of resources.
For its part, the prefecture, part of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, has detailed in a statement released on social media that "41 people have been transferred to the victims' meeting point, including 15 who have been evacuated to a hospital."
In that statement, the departmental authority has estimated that 300 homes have been damaged by the meteorological phenomenon, for which "operations are being carried out to secure the buildings, especially the ground floors of the most affected homes, to prevent any risk of collapse." In addition, several roads in the area remain closed to traffic.
More than 120 firefighters have been deployed in the emergency response, awaiting the arrival of "reinforcements from neighboring departments (that) are on the way," according to the Prefecture of Aude, which adds that "the gendarmerie is deployed to secure the area and will monitor the region and its surroundings throughout the night."
In parallel, only the departments of South Corsica and Upper Corsica remain on orange alert for thunderstorms during the night, according to the latest bulletin from Météo France. The agency has again reduced to two the territories with this alert level, removing Bouches-du-Rhône and Var from the list, which hours earlier were part of a total of 20 departments, concentrated mainly in the center and south of the country.
New wind speed records have also been reported in southeastern France. The Pézenas-Tourbes station, in the department of Hérault, recorded a gust of 121 km/h, exceeding the previous maximum by three kilometers per hour, set in August 1999 with a gust of 118.8 km/h.
In the department of Vaucluse, a gust of 146.5 km/h has been measured. Likewise, monthly records have been broken in Béziers-Cap d'Agde, in Aude, and in Salon-de-Provence, in Bouches-du-Rhône.