Corsica is experiencing a "relative calm", with storms which are currently "not very active", announced Météo-France in a bulletin issued Friday morning, specifying however that "active storms are still forming at sea".

These new storms, which should shift over Corsica at the start of the day, "can give significant electrical activity, high rainfall intensities, from 40 to 60 mm in a short time, hail and strong gusts of wind close to 80 km/h", according to the meteorological organization.

“The coastal areas are the most exposed”, she adds, “especially the western facade and Balagne, but without excluding the eastern coast”.

The Mediterranean island, where the tourist season is in full swing, went back to orange vigilance Thursday at 9:00 p.m., for a "more lasting" rainy-stormy episode than the day before.

Thursday morning, very brutal thunderstorms killed five people across the Isle of Beauty, including two at sea, a 62-year-old fisherman and a kayaker in her sixties.

This report was confirmed Thursday evening to AFP by the Ministry of the Interior, the maritime prefecture and the two Corsican prefectures, after a sixth death was announced by mistake by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin since the Corsica, based on misleading information from firefighters.

Thursday evening, several campsites in Corse-du-Sud were evacuated in anticipation of new storms, announced with "strong rainy intensities" but gusts of wind "less violent than those observed Thursday morning", measured at more than 200 km/ h.

In Haute-Corse, 5,400 people "accommodated in the most exposed campsites (Calvi, Calenzana, Aregno, Algajola, Corbara and Monticello) have been brought to safety", detailed the prefecture in a press release.

"Rehousing operations are underway" for the evacuees, Gilles Simeoni, President of the Executive Council of Corsica, had indicated earlier, alongside Mr. Darmanin in the Sagone campsite (Corse-du-Sud) where a teenager 13-year-old lost his life after a tree fell on his bungalow.

The other victims are a 46-year-old man, also victim of a falling tree on a campsite in Calvi (Haute-Corse), and a septuagenarian, killed a few kilometers from the Sagone campsite by the fall of the roof of a straw hut on his vehicle.

During his visit to Sagone, Mr. Darmanin announced that a state of natural disaster could be declared as early as Wednesday.

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In Ajaccio, the minister then took part by videoconference in the first meeting of the interministerial crisis unit, chaired by Emmanuel Macron from Fort Brégançon (Var).

"Tonight, stay careful," tweeted the head of state on Thursday evening, once again expressing his "support and that of the Nation for the Corsicans who have been hard hit".

"In three seconds, the wind has turned"

Conceding to have been "surprised" by an "exceptional" and "difficult to predict" situation by its digital models, Météo-France defended itself from not having activated its orange vigilance in advance on Thursday morning.

The winds which hit the island were "extremely violent" and they were "unexpected, in any case unexpected in this intensity", estimated for his part Gérald Darmanin, qualifying this phenomenon as "without doubt exceptional".

"In three seconds the wind has turned", testified for her part Marie Lévêque, forty, on vacation with her husband and their five children, including a baby, in a villa in Sagone: "It was apocalyptic".

A total of 20 people were injured on the island, four of them seriously, said the Minister of the Interior.

Among them, a 23-year-old Italian woman, also a victim of a falling tree in the Calvi pine forest, is "still in absolute emergency", according to the prefecture.

In the Gulf of Sagone, five people on board a sailboat narrowly escaped death, after their boat "was aground and broke up on the beach", explained Benjamin Roux, 26, a tourist from Isère. came to their aid.

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According to a press release from the maritime prefecture, 125 rescue operations at sea were carried out in Corsica on Thursday, most of them for "ships in difficulty".

On Tuesday and Wednesday, strong thunderstorms accompanied by sustained rains had hit the south-east of France, but the damage had remained very limited on the continent.

In central Italy, two people died on Thursday and around 50 were injured in a storm that uprooted trees and swept away roofs in Tuscany.

In Austria, a storm also killed five people on Thursday, including two children.

© 2022 AFP