Each year, a hundred people are unfortunately struck by lightning in France. This Thursday afternoon, a man in his fifties died struck by lightning in Gaillard, Haute-Savoie, firefighters announced. Violent storms hit the department during the day.
The drama took place shortly after 5 p.m. in a parking lot in this town of 11,500 inhabitants located south-west of Annemasse, they said, confirming information from France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. “The victim was declared dead on the spot despite the rapid intervention of first aid,” the same source explained.
heavy rainfall
Ten people who witnessed the lightning strike were taken care of by the department’s medico-psychological emergency unit, attached to the Samu. Météo-France had placed eleven departments on orange thunderstorm vigilance on Thursday morning, then reduced this figure to seven (Ain, Ardennes, Drôme, Isère, Rhône, Savoie and Haute-Savoie) in the middle of the afternoon.
“These storms, mobile, were associated with high rainfall intensities, punctually large hail and violent gusts of wind often exceeding 100 km / h. We thus noted 106 km / h in Annecy, 112 km / h in Saint-Geoirs, 126 km / h in Chambéry. Very high rainfall intensities were recorded, up to 30 mm in less than 15 minutes,” said Météo-France in a press release.
Incitement to “the greatest caution”
The Haute-Savoie firefighters also indicated in a press release that nearly 160 interventions were recorded around 7 p.m., “mainly for exhaustion (water pumping), falling trees or tiles”. They added that the situation was in the early evening in the process of stabilization but “that trees and roofs” could be “weakened”, before inviting the population “to be very careful”.
Orange storm vigilance was lifted by Météo-France at the end of the day, while 52 departments remained on yellow vigilance until midnight for thunderstorms, rain, flooding and/or flooding. Corsica, the Mediterranean region and the entire north-west of the country are essentially excluded from this.