French rescuers search for eight missing in storm

French civil defence teams said 51 people were dead and 8 missing after the storm ˝Xynthia˝ destroyed roads and houses along the coast.

PARIS, March 2, 2010 (AFP) - Rescuers searched flooded houses on the western France coast on Tuesday for eight people still missing three days after a storm which killed least 61 people in Europe.

Engineers also struggled to restore power for tens of thousands of homes.

French civil defence teams said 51 people were dead and eight missing after the storm, dubbed "Xynthia", unleashed gale force winds and torrential rains on Sunday, destroying roads and houses along France's Atlantic coast.

At least five people also died in Germany, three in Spain, one in Portugal and one in Belgium.

France's fiercest storm since 1999 made landfall early on Sunday, churning up eight-metre (26-foot) waves, surprising coastal residents in their beds and sending them scrambling onto rooftops.

Wind reached hurricane-force speeds of 150 kilometres per hour (93 mph).

Teams of rescuers have since been wading through the thigh-deep waters and taking to boats to reach flooded houses, mostly in the Vendee and Charente regions of western France.

French electricity distributor EDRF said in a statement that 49,700 homes remained without electricity and it had 5,000 staff out working to restore power.

President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the region on Monday and mourned "a national catastrophe, a human tragedy with a dreadful toll."

Criticism arose over flood defences and construction permits in the region, where dykes collapsed and houses built near the shore were flooded by the tide. Sarkozy ordered investigations and a review of the sea defences.

Some flood defences "were insufficient given the size of this disaster," Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said Tuesday, "and then there is the question of building in flood-prone areas."

"It is certainly one of the hardest tragedies we have lived through together" since 1999, when an even bigger storm left 92 dead, Hortefeux said.

"There is a total, strong mobilisation to help those who are most affected," he added, citing Sarkozy's announcement of three million euros (four million dollars) of emergency funds for victims.

Authorities warned that high tides forecast in southern Brittany on Tuesday pose a new flood risk.