Flash flood kills three in France

Surging flood waters killed three men and swept a woman off a bridge in storms that lashed southern France, closing schools, roads and power plants and causing dozens of people to flee their homes.

Divers were last night searching for the 53-year-old woman who was missing in Virigneux in the central Loire region.

Firefighters in the southern port city of Marseille found a 45-year-old man who had drowned in a cellar filled with 8.25 feet of water. Another man, aged 60, drowned in the town of Orange in the hard-hit Vaucluse district.

In the neighbouring Ardeche district, a man in his 50s was found dead after a river flooded its banks, forcing him to lose control of the car he was driving.

Officials in Ardeche shut down two out of four nuclear reactors at the Cruas-Meysse power plant for fear that branches and leaves in the floodwaters would clog cooling systems, officials said.

Ecology minister Roselyne Bachelot, meanwhile, urged residents of the flood-hit south-east to avoid driving during the heavy rainfall, which is expected to last through tomorrow morning.

Several major roads across the region were closed to traffic and France’s rail authority, the SNCF, cancelled more than a dozen trains.

In the Rhone district, 800 people were evacuated from their homes and taken to temporary shelters. Authorities in Marseille received 500 calls for flood-related incidents.

In Charlieu, south-east France, 750 pupils had the day off from school because of flooding, and 90 people were evacuated from their homes.

Meanwhile, in Australia, rescuers steered boats through the streets of Melbourne early today after a freak storm caused widespread flooding and left drivers stranded on the roofs of their cars.

The storms began around midnight local time, dumping five inches of rain in less than three hours in the west, north and inner suburbs of Melbourne, said weather bureau forecaster Ken Dickensen who described the storm as “freakish”.

“I’ve only seen something like this a couple of times in 30 years,” he said.

A fire brigade spokeswoman said 12 people whose cars had stalled on a major road amid swirling flood waters were rescued by boat.

The Victoria State Emergency Service agency said it had received 1,000 calls for help mostly for flooded homes, collapsed roofs and fallen trees.