Bad weather in Corsica. Darmanin evokes « rather reassuring news » of the seriously injured

Arrived in Corsica on Thursday afternoon, with a passage in a first campsite hit by gusts, in Sagone, in Corse-du-Sud, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin visited Friday morning in Calvi another disaster-stricken campsite, after a morning visit to the bedside of several wounded at Ajaccio hospital.

Stressing in passing that Thursday morning’s weather alert had « not made it possible to properly qualify these winds » which were « absolutely exceptional », Mr. Darmanin announced a civil security investigation.

« We have rather reassuring news » of the four injured « who were between life and death or whose vital prognosis was engaged », also welcomed the Minister, describing as « a request for common sense » the wish expressed by the manager of the campsite to be able to create a permanent shelter to protect holidaymakers, in a pine forest where this is however prohibited by the town planning code.

Some 12,500 campers brought to safety

In total, some 12,500 people from the various campsites in Corsica were « put to safety » in schools or sports centers across the island for the night, according to the prefectures.

The heaviest price for Thursday’s storm was paid by an Austrian family, with the death of their 13-year-old teenager, killed by a tree falling on her tent, in a campsite in Sagone.
Also injured, his sister was no longer in absolute emergency on Friday morning. Very seriously injured, the girls’ uncle was transferred to Bastia for surgery.

The other victims are a septuagenarian, killed a few kilometers from the Sagone campsite by the fall of the roof of a straw hut on her vehicle, and two people found at sea: a 62-year-old fisherman and a 60-year-old kayaker.

Friday morning, the Maritime Prefecture told AFP that it had « no reports of concern by relatives » about « people (at sea) of whom we would not have heard ». But “you have to go and check, by identifying the stranded or damaged boats, if the owners were on board and if they managed to get out of it by themselves or if they were not on board”.