Over five dead in southern France storms

Rescue workers were searching for a man who was swept away by a flooded river in the south of France on Wednesday. Five people have died in storms in the region over the last week.

AFP/Valéry Hache

A middle-aged man was swept away when a mechanical digger was carried away by the raging waters of the river Var at Castagniers, north-west of Nice. The vehicle’s driver was

Five people have died in the storms that have hit the south of the country over the last few days. They were a homeless German man, an elderly couple, a 60-year-old man and a 50-year-old man.

able to hang on to the river bank and was rescued.

The two had been repairing a riverside path.

The wind died down Wednesday after reaching 154 kilometres per hour on the island of Porquerolles off Toulon and rainfall slacked off. Seven-metre-high waves swept the coastline between Porquerolles and Nice during Tuesday night.

Coast roads between Antibes and Villeneuve-Loubet and Roquebrune-Cap-Martin and Menton remained closed Wednesday because they were blocked by sand and rubble, although they were reopened at Nice, Cagnes-sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-du-Var.

About 700 households had no electricity on Wednesday and several areas of the Var region, where over 800 people had been moved from their homes, had no drinking water.