A tornado in southwestern France wipes out an entire town in 3 minutes: “It’s a miracle there were no deaths”

In less than 3 minutes, Pomas, in southwestern France, was devastated. There were 43 injured, two of them very seriously, and 300 of the 476 houses in the area were completely destroyed. The population was evacuated.

The risk zone had been clearly identified. The day after the disaster, the mayor of this town in the Aude region assessed the damage.

“Right now, we are in a state of shock,” he acknowledged. The day after the unusually violent tornado that devastated his town on Monday, Hervé Giné can only stare at the damage. The mayor of Pomas, in southwestern France, struggles to find the words to describe the landscape left behind by this meteorological phenomenon.

“There are people who have lost everything. Many people. There are neighborhoods that have been literally razed,” the mayor lamented Tuesday morning. “We should be talking about an intensity between 2 and 3, on a six-point scale, from 0 to 6,” he said.

“As mayor, I feel enormous relief because we could have had 20 or 30 deaths30 victims,” ​​Hervé Giné sighed, before recounting the sudden passage of the tornado.

“Some people took refuge in their houses, which collapsed, but they were saved. Five hours ago, in the community center, in the youth center, we had about ten young people playing who locked themselves inside. We could have had young people on the streets. It’s a miracle“It’s a miracle that there have been no victims,” ​​he said.

It will take time for the town to recover from this unprecedented disaster. A few days before the start of the school year, Hervé Giné commented with dismay that “The daycare has disappeared. We no longer have school, We no longer have a town hall. We will have to rebuild together,” he concluded.

Perle, a Pomas resident, said residents had been warned about the forecast for strong winds and hail on Monday. But the tornado took them by surprise when it hit the area around 5:30 p.m. local time. “The town is totally devastated,” he told BFMTV. “There are people who have been left homeless,” he said.

Residents who lost their homes took refuge in a nearby holiday complex, set up as emergency accommodation, while 120 emergency services personnel deployed in the town began clean-up efforts.

In France, according to Météo-France, On average, several dozen tornadoes occur per year.of variable intensity. But the effect of climate change on its frequency, intensity and geographical distribution intensifies them.

“An extremely violent storm cannot be ruled out between the departments of Aude and Hérault,” with “a significant risk of tornadoes, especially from the Aude valley to the Bouches-du-Rhône coast.” The forecasts of the specialized website Keraunos, published on Monday morning for the following day, were unfortunately confirmed in the evening.

“The tornado developed within a supercell, in an environment particularly conducive to violent weather events. They were observed hailstones between 3 and 5 centimeters in diameter close to his career,” reports La Chaîne Météo.

In the department, wind gusts of 117 km/h were recorded in Arquettes-en-Val and 105 km/h in Lézignan-Corbières. Precipitation was also intense: 35.1 millimeters fell in one hour in Montolieu, 29.1 in Caunes-Minervois and 20.7 in Carcassonne.

Tornadoes are not uncommon in France and form when a band of thunderstorms moves across the territory. Warm, moist air rising from the ground meets cold, dry air, creating a vortex that descends from the base of the cloud toward the ground.

This movement intensifies, becoming a powerful upward current. The accelerated rotation generates a destructive force in its wake, with winds that can exceed 300 km/h.

When everyone was surprised by the climatic violence in Pomas, a brutal storm, accompanied by strong gusts of wind, caused significant local damage in Bouches-du-Rhône. Employees at an Amazon warehouse had to be evacuated.

The department’s firefighters reported a sudden increase in activity, with more than 700 calls and 200 interventions. The winds reached speeds of up to 100 km/h, causing trees to fall.

In Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, a 20,000-volt power line was damaged, leaving much of the city in darkness. Power was restored overnight. Around 8:45 p.m., firefighters were alerted to a collapse in a 50-square-meter section of the roof of the Amazon warehouse in Saint-Martin-de-Crau. All 140 employees had to be evacuated and the warehouse was flooded. There was also a collapse of scaffolding in La Ciotat.

At least 41 people were injured during the storm. Among the injured was a pregnant woman, whose house partially collapsed when the tornado devastated parts of the southern region of Occitania.

Several flights departing from major cities such as Bordeaux, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Pariswere canceled or delayed, as hail and flash floods caused serious disruptions to public transport networks.

Destructive winds toppled trees, causing traffic chaos and power line damage. More than 2,800 homes remained without electricity late Monday.

Authorities had declared an orange alert for storms across much of southwestern France on Monday. At midnight, most French regions remained under a less serious yellow alert.

Météo-France issued an orange alert for Corsica. The warning warned that heavy rain, hail and “violent” wind gusts of up to 130 km/h could affect the island by Tuesday morning, before the storm continued its course towards Italy.