Storm Austen leaves about 242,000 homes without power in France
The storm left one indirect death and halted trains and flights, with no date for restoring power, and is now moving on to Belgium.
Storm Austen, which swept in from the Atlantic, knocked out power to about 242,000 homes on Friday in northwestern France, mostly in Normandy and Brittany. Enedis, the power distribution company, has given no date for restoring service and calls the situation still highly fluid.
At its worst the outage reached nearly 300,000 customers. By Friday evening, 82,100 homes were dark in Normandy and 65,800 in Brittany, followed by Hauts-de-France with 32,100 and Pays de la Loire with 28,200.
A man died in Manche, in Normandy, after suffering cardiac arrest while cutting a fallen tree trunk in his yard. The prefecture called it an "indirect consequence" of the storm. Others in France were lightly hurt, and falling trees injured four people in Brussels, where the storm arrived later.
Gusts topped 160 km/h (99 mph) at the Finistère headland, and Météo-France kept an orange wind alert over 23 departments until midday.
Transport took the hit. Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot suspended all rail traffic in Normandy, and regional Nomad lines stayed shut until 14:00 on Saturday. High-speed TGV trains will skip Montpellier Saint-Roch and Nîmes Centre because of flooding, and will not resume before Thursday. Paris-area RER commuter lines were badly disrupted, and flights were delayed or canceled at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Orly and Nantes.
Austen is now heading for the Benelux countries and Germany. Behind it comes Storm Boelo, which Britain's Met Office says will reach Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England on Saturday with gusts of 70 to 80 mph. In France, the government plans to publish a natural disaster decree by the end of next week at the latest, to speed up insurance payouts.
