Daily Times

LONDON: A powerful winter storm battered Europe on Friday, killing one woman and leaving 330,000 homes without power in France as flights and train services were cancelled and coastal areas put on flood alert.

Britain issued nearly a dozen severe flood warnings, meaning there was a risk of severe flooding and danger to life, and urged thousands of people to evacuate their homes in several seaside communities.

The storm, officially named Egon, also battered Belgium and Germany, where the key international hub of Frankfurt airport cancelled 120 flights, according to German media. Eurostar cancelled two trains between London and Paris, while 180 passengers were forced to spend a chilly night on a high-speed Thalys train from Brussels to the French capital that finally arrived 10 hours late.

“We stopped on the tracks at around 9pm,” said Eduardo Soteras, a passenger on the train.

“At first we had electricity, but then it cut. We found ourselves in the dark without heating.” In France, a woman was killed by a falling tree in her garden in a village near the Mediterranean resort of Nice, while another woman in Albania was found dead on Thursday outside her home in the southern town of Saranda.

“She died in front of her children. Her husband immediately tried to help by cutting the tree but it was too late,” a French police official said of the death there.

The rose window of a famous Gothic cathedral in Soissons in northern France was also badly damaged.