December 27, 1999

Storm Kills at Least 62 in France, Switzerland and Germany

By SUZANNE DALEY

ARIS, Dec. 26 -- A fierce storm with hurricane-force winds barreled across northern France and parts of Switzerland and Germany today, injuring hundreds and killing as many as 62 people, including one victim who was crushed in a falling ski gondola in the Swiss Alps.

The gales, which reached 95 miles an hour in the heart of Paris, left broken branches and uprooted trees along the Champs-Élysées, smashed windows at Versailles and littered this city with twisted awnings, smashed roof tiles and Christmas trees ripped from their planters.

Rows of once neatly parked motorcycles lay in helter-skelter piles in the streets. Huge sheets of roofing and television dishes rested in the gutters, and many of Paris's tourist destinations closed for fear of falling debris. One of them was Disneyland Paris, where six people visiting the Davy Crockett Ranch were seriously injured by falling branches.

Because of the need to clean up, most of Paris's gardens and public spaces will be closed until late Monday, the authorities said. Mayor Jean Tibéri called for the city to be declared a disaster area and asked for state funds to help with repairs.

Through the day, the city's train stations and airports were filled with holiday travelers, most of them glum and angry as services were widely disrupted. The airports closed for two hours, and delays and cancellations continued into the night.

The authorities also shut 7 of the city's 14 subway lines as well as nearly all commuter train services to and from the suburbs. Paris, which has for days been full to bursting with tourists, was eerily quiet, and the streets were virtually empty.

The Champs-Élysées, to be the focus of this city's millennium celebrations and already home to 12 specially erected Ferris wheels, was shut completely. The authorities feared that pedestrians might be hit by flying roof debris.

The storm also helped push hundreds of tons of viscous fuel oil onto the beaches along the Atlantic coast of France, where bad weather has hindered efforts to contain the damage caused two weeks ago when a tanker broke up nearby in stormy seas.

After visiting the area, the minister of environment, Dominique Voynet, said the situation was very grave. "What is really striking," she said, "is the fact that the elements are against us. You can't take the boats out and do the things you would like to do to battle this thing."

More than 8,000 tons of the tar-like oil are believed to have escaped from the tanker, but so far pumping vessels have mopped up only about 1,000 tons. On the beaches today, hundreds of volunteers used shovels to pick up globs of the smelly, black oil, but rough seas just kept delivering more.

While a storm this strong is "very unusual" in the natural scheme of weather, it is not unprecedented, said Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. This one, he said, "just happened to have all of the ingredients."

In this case, a storm system characterized by unusually low atmospheric pressure moved off the Atlantic into Europe. Low pressure is a measure of a storm's intensity; the lower the pressure, the worse the storm.

The storm that struck Paris had the low pressure normally associated with a hurricane. Measured this way, Mr. Warner said, it was as intense as the hurricane that devastated much of the northeastern United States coast in 1985.

Today's storm was made worse by a high pressure system over North Africa that abutted the North Atlantic's low-pressure system in such a way as to strengthen the winds. When high pressure and low pressure bump up against each other, air rushes from the high to fill the relative vacuum of the low, and the result is high wind. The greater the pressure difference between the high and low, the stronger the wind.

While stormy weather had been predicted, the force of the winds took meteorologists by surprise. In Paris, such winds have never been recorded before, officials said. Nor did they lose strength as they moved rapidly eastward. The storm, which gathered force over the Atlantic, apparently hit the Brittany coast at about 4 a.m. today and had crossed France by 10 a.m.

French officials estimated that nearly two million households lost electricity at some point and that nearly half that many would probably go the night without service.

Most of those hurt or killed were hit by falling debris. In Paris, one person was gravely injured on the Avenue du Maine when a piece of a chimney broke off. On Rue Pergolèse two passers-by were hurt when a building facade collapsed. On the outskirts of Paris in Versailles, one man was killed when a tree fell on his car. In Argenteuil, a couple died when the roof of their apartment building caved in.

But at least one woman, apparently walking her dog, drowned when she was swept into a river near Strasbourg. Another woman was apparently blown into Le Havre harbor.

News broadcasts showed helicopter views of devastation across the country, where roads were blocked by fallen trees, cars were crushed under piles of debris, roofs had been ripped off and small planes had been dragged across runways and tipped upside down.

President Jacques Chirac expressed his sympathies for the families who had been hurt in the storm and issued a statement praising rescue workers. Paris firefighters said they had received 10,000 inquiries and responded to 1,600 sites.

The gale-force winds also swept through parts of Switzerland, reaching 120 miles an hour at some points.

In the ski resort of Crans Montana, one skier was killed and four injured, two seriously, when an uprooted tree crashed into the cable of a ski lift, sending the gondola they were in crashing to the ground. Other deaths included an elderly man blown off his roof near Zurich.

In southwestern Germany, six people died, most of them in road accidents caused by fallen trees, including three occupants of a car hit by a tree near Ettlingen.

High tides and the threat of floods forced about 300 people out of homes along the south coast of England on Christmas Day. Three people have died in weather-related incidents in Britain since Friday.

France's national weather service said rain and strong winds would continue through Monday but would not reach the levels seen earlier today.