Indo-Asian News Service
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BRUSSELS, Belgium — Strong windstorms accompanied by heavy downpours raged across northwest Europe on Thursday, causing fatalities and disrupting transport in some large cities.
The storm, Kyrill has claimed about 27 lives — four in Britain, two in Netherlands, three in the Czech Republic, six in Poland and several more in Germany and other places. Many of the deaths were caused by storm-related and traffic accidents.
Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Germany was wrapped up earlier for fear of a worsening storm.
Registered the fiercest to batter Europe in recent years with a speed close to 170 km per hour (kph), the storm caused a large number of road accidents and disrupted flight, rail and ferry services and power supply.
In the English Channel, a British container ship sank in which all 26 crew of the MSC Napoli had abandoned the ship to a lifeboat. Some Underground stations in downtown London were closed as well as certain road sections.
Heathrow Airport, the largest in Europe, cancelled 280 flights while other major airports including Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam and Vienna claimed delays and cancellations.
The storm arrived in Hungary in the early hours of Friday morning without the expected venom, knocking down chimneys and in one case blowing a roof off a cinema. The fire brigade was called out over 400 times, but nobody was reported injured.
In Austria, Kyrill caused considerable damage and several injuries with wind speeds reaching 148 kph in the early hours of Friday and top speeds of up to 166 kph recorded in mountainous areas. Transport was disrupted and thousands of households faced blackouts.
In Poland thousands of toppled trees blocked roads, nearly 800,000 homes across the country were left without electricity and hundreds of others were damaged.