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2010-01-10 07:21:45 - Complex Emergency - France EDIS CODE: CE-20100110-24493-FRA
Date & Time: 2010-01-10 07:21:45 [UTC]
Area: France, , Statewide, '!!! WARNING !!! Damage level: Heavy (Level 3)
Not confirmed information! Description: A cold snap, coupled with heavy snowfalls, has interrupted traffic flows on roads, rails and in air while forcing up power consumption to a record high in France. Meteo-France, the French national meteorological service, has decided to maintain till Sunday in most of the country's 26 administrative regions its orange alert against the ongoing cold spell. France uses a weather alert system of green, yellow, orange and red to indicate alerts ranging from caution to warning. The meteorological agency on Saturday forecast snowfalls of between 10 and 15 centimeters in the west of the country and in excess of 30 centimeters in some areas. French high-speed rail service TGV was disrupted on Saturday with delays of up to three hours in the southeast regions. The capacity of regional express trains TER was limited as certain services were canceled on Saturday through Sunday. The snow and cold stranded by six hours 180 passengers traveling by train from Le Mans to Paris. Black ice and poor visibility on highways on Saturday claimed four lives in central France in two separate road accidents. Policemen and gendarmes rescued over 130 passengers trapped in cold-triggered breakdowns on roads in the north. While nearly half of the flights off the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in north Paris were delayed for over 30 minutes, the Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in southwest France was shut down early on Saturday and some 1,000 passengers were stranded at the Lyon-Saint Exupery Airport due to weather-caused cancellation of flights. Hundreds of electricians rushed to the rescue as power cut struck thousands of households in southeast France but electricity supplies were not expected to resume until late next week. The daily consumption of natural gas in France reached a new record on Friday at an equivalent of 3,053 gigawatt/hours due to the cold snap, according to the operator of gas transmission network GRT Gaz on Saturday. France would probably beat its electricity consumption record early next week when consumption is expected to exceed 93,000 megawatts at peak hours. The historical record of electricity consumption was 92,400 megawatts as registered on Jan. 7, 2009.
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