Christmas storms ground planes, derail trains and leave hundreds of thousands without electricity
Thursday, December 26, 2013 @ 10:45 AM
STORMS across northern Spain have caused a train to derail, left four people injured, homes and shops flooded, flights grounded and over 100,000 people without electricity. Winds of up to 185 kilometres per hour (115mph) swept the north of the country and rainfall reached 140 litres per square metre (14 centimetres, or nearly six inches). In Galicia, 88,000 homes were left without power in the early hours of Christmas Eve, and 20,000 of these were not reconnected until mid-afternoon – only just in time to cook the traditional festive feast that night for all the family. A FEVE train came off its rails in Covas (Lugo province) in the north-western region of Galicia after a tree fell on the track. None of the 10 passengers or crew were injured, and they were taken to their onward destination by taxi. A 50-year-old man and a girl of 17 were injured by falling trees in Valladolid, in the central region of Castilla y León, and a man of 60 in the same town by a flower pot which fell from a balcony. In the Basque Country, a pedestrian was hurt by a tree coming down on him in the province of Guipúzcoa.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com