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DESTINATION: Corsica
LOCATION: Bonifacio

Corsica’s Deadly Storm!

I couldn’t sum it up better than this news article …

We were lucky we were not a few days earlier getting to Corsica!
In the end the death toll was 7 people. Very sad.

Violent thunderstorms batter France’s Corsica, death toll mounts

Issued on: 18/08/2022 – 12:06

A storm in the Taravo valley of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, August 11, 2022.01:48, AFP

Fierce thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds hit the French island of Corsica on Thursday morning, killing at least five people, including a teenage girl, and injuring dozens of others, local authorities said.

Following three days of intense rains, thunderstorms on Thursday killed at least five people on or off the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea island.

Hail, heavy rain and winds measured as peaking at 224 km per hour (140 mph) swept across the French island as parts of the country – which has been hit by a series of heatwaves and severe drought – saw more rain in just a few hours than in recent months combined.

Those killed on Corsica, a major tourist destination, included a 13-year-old girl who died when a tree fell on the campsite where she was staying and a 72-year-old woman whose car was struck by a beach hut roof, authorities said.

A 46-year old Frenchman died when a tree fell on a campsite bungalow in the north, authorities said. A 23-year-old Italian woman was injured at the same location and taken to hospital in critical condition.

Rescue crews found the bodies of a 62-year-old fisherman and an unidentified kayaker off Corsica’s coasts, according to the French maritime authority for the Mediterranean. It said both died as a result of the sudden storm and that more than 100 grounded, wrecked or stranded ships in the area have called for emergency help.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he had called an emergency government meeting by video conference on Thursday evening to respond to the crisis.

Visiting Corsica, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that at one point about 350 people had been reported missing as pleasure boats had capsized or been thrown adrift, but he said they had now all been found alive and well.

‘There was no warning’
Witnesses of the morning storm, which wrecked campsites, delayed trains and uprooted trees, said they had never seen anything like it on the island.

“We have never seen such huge storms as this, you would think it was a tropical storm,” said Cedric Boell, manager of the restaurant Les Gones Corses in northern Corscia, who saw two pleasure boats tossed onto nearby rocks.

Yolhan Niveau, 24, a wildlife photographer staying at a campsite near San-Nicolao in the northeast of the island, said the storm had torn through the site, uprooting trees and damaging mobile homes.

“There was no warning. … I don’t feel scared just stupefaction. No one expected this,” Niveau said.

The Deadly Corsica Storm

If you go to 4:38 in the video below, you will see a Bavaria Vision sailboat just like TUI.
Its whole bow has been ripped off but it is still afloat!

.. and here is another one from a topside/land perspective … check out the Ferris Wheel at 1:05!

Hire an experienced professional to show you Corsica!

Guided Tours around Bonifacio

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