Storm sows trail of destruction across Europe

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Fierce winds and heavy rains claimed at least three lives across northern Europe on Monday as Storm Ciara disrupted travel, grounded hundreds of flights, flooded roads and left vast areas without power.

In one of the region’s most violent storms for years, one man died and another was reported missing in southern Sweden when their boat capsized. In southern Poland, at Bukowina Tatrzanska, a 40-year-old woman and her young daughter were killed by roofing torn away by the storm-force winds, police in Zakopane said.

Police in London said on Monday that a man had been killed in his car on Sunday when a tree fell on to a motorway southwest of the capital. In the west of Germany, falling trees seriously injured three people: two women in Sarrebruck -- one of whom was in a critical condition -- and a 16-year-old boy in Paderborn.

And in the Czech Republic, a man was injured by a falling tree. Winds of up to 180-km an hour left 100,000 without power, even toppling over a truck. The storm has swept across the region since the weekend.

It caused extensive flooding in England, cut power to 130,000 homes in northern France and played havoc with air, rail and road travel in several countries. It forced more than 700 flights in four German cities - Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf and Cologne - to be cancelled.

In the Netherlands, around 220 flights were cancelled Monday morning at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport -- Europe’s third-busiest -- most destined for other European cities. Around 240 never took off on Sunday.

And having closed one of the big storm surge barriers as the tempest approached Sunday night, Dutch police reported more than 600 kilometres of traffic jams on Monday. Tiny Luxembourg cancelled school classes, and in the Belgian capital Brussels, morning rush-hour traffic ground to a halt due to street closures and flooding.