Rare tornado in southwestern France injures dozens, damages homes

A tornado swept through a village in the Aude region of southwestern France late on Monday, destroying homes and injuring 39 people, authorities said, describing it as a rare and traumatic event.

Two of the injured are in a critical condition and around 300 houses in the village of Pomas have been damaged, officials said. Everyone in the village has been evacuated while authorities verify if homes are still safe to live in, they added.

"It felt as though death itself was falling upon us," Severine, a Pomas resident who did not give her surname, told BFM TV.

Speaking in front of her house, now flattened by the tornado, she said on Tuesday that the car her family piled into was shaken by the tornado before they managed to speed up and escape.

"We fled, it was survival instinct," she said, as people helped the family of four sort through the ruins to see what could be salvaged.

Social media footage verified by Reuters also showed the tornado swirling above the nearby village of Verzeille in Aude, late on Monday. Many of the homes caught up in its path had their windows smashed.

The tornado struck as this summer's intense heatwave gave way this week to thunderstorms in many areas of southern France.

On Tuesday morning 1,400 households in the area were still without electricity, the local prefecture said.

"This is an exceptional event, and it is deeply traumatic for all the residents," senior official Marie-Helene Bouissac told reporters.

While France may have dozens of tornadoes a year, that is far fewer than the United States where more than 1,000 are recorded each year. Tornadoes in France are also usually mild, according to official weather forecaster Meteo-France.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Dominique Vidalon; writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Conor Humphries and Edwina Gibb