Two people have died after their vehicle was swept away in flooding caused by heavy rain on the French island of Corsica, France's interior minister said on Friday, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters via SRN News
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said a 40-year-old woman was rescued, Reuters reported. One of the firefighters who responded to the incident was taken to hospital and was being treated for hypothermia, Nunez said.
The deaths were reported as a storm that began on Wednesday afternoon continued to soak the island. Since the storm began, authorities have recorded as much as 350 mm (13.8 inches) of rainfall, Reuters reported.
Warnings in force for Corsica and southern France
The French weather agency Meteo France has warned of flooding and heavy rain in Corsica and in portions of southern France, Reuters reported.
Meteo France had already raised both of Corsica's departments, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud, to orange vigilance for rain and floods, with forecasters expecting widespread totals of 150 to 400 mm across much of the island and local peaks higher than that, according to reporting based on Meteo France warnings on November 5.
Porto-Vecchio was flooded a day earlier
On Thursday, November 5, flooding in Porto-Vecchio in southern Corsica forced residents from flooded homes, cut the main road into the town and sent around 100 people to an emergency shelter, with rescues by boat and helicopter reported in local coverage based on French weather and fire-service information. Schools in Porto-Vecchio were ordered closed until Monday, November 9, in that coverage.
That means the two deaths reported on Friday came after at least two days of warnings, evacuations and rescues on the island — not from a storm that arrived without warning.
Confirmed by Reuters, citing the interior minister: two people died when their vehicle was swept away; a 40-year-old woman was rescued; a firefighter was hospitalised with hypothermia; and up to 350 mm of rain had been recorded since Wednesday afternoon. Reuters did not name the place on the island where the vehicle was swept away, and no names of the dead were released in its report.
Corsica was also hit by severe Mediterranean storms earlier this autumn, so the ground was already saturated in parts of the south of France before this week's rain, according to weather coverage of the November 5 flooding. Saturated ground makes flash flooding more likely because rain runs off instead of soaking in.
What happens next: Meteo France warnings for Corsica and southern France remain the official guide for residents, and French authorities have not yet published a full damage assessment for this storm in the reports reviewed for this story.