On Tuesday evening, the Centre-Val-de-Loire region was hit by violent storms, causing major power outages and disruptions to rail traffic. According to Enedis, an outage of the very high voltage network managed by RTE near Blois occurred at 8:00 p.m., affecting up to 23,000 homes. Enedis reported that by 10:00 p.m., more than 50% of homes had been restored through remote operations. Shortly before midnight, just under 10,000 homes were still without electricity and restoration operations were still underway.
Twelve departments on orange alert for storms
The storms also caused train traffic between Tours and Blois to stop due to a power failure in Limeray. SNCF reported that two trains were immobilized on the track shortly after 8:00 p.m. SNCF teams were deployed to restore the situation, with priority given to passenger care. By 11:00 p.m., restoration operations were well underway.
Météo-France has placed twelve departments on orange alert for thunderstorms and 45 departments on orange alert for heatwave. The Paris region, as well as several areas of the Olympic Games, are also affected, leading to the closure of several fan zones in anticipation of the stormy episode expected in the evening.