Millions humour as Continent counts cost of lethal storm

THOUSANDS of firefighters and alternative rescue workers searched residence by residence along Frances ravaged Atlantic seashore yesterday, perplexing to assistance those still stuck by a charge that crushed sea walls and killed at slightest 62 people opposite horse opera Europe. The storm, called Xynthia, blew in to France early on Sunday with hurricane-force winds, flooding ports, destroying homes and withdrawal a million households but electricity. It additionally smashed Belgium, Portugal, Spain and tools of Germany and disrupteADVERTISEMENTd sight and air transport opposite the continent.French boss Nicolas Sarkozy toured the worst-hit areas yesterday, the coastal regions of Vendée and Charente-Maritime, and affianced 3 million (�2.68m) in puncture aid.Regional officials clamoured for France to strengthen the ageing sea walls quickly. About half the French genocide fee of 51 was attributed to the crack of the wall off the coastal locale of L"Aiguillon-sur-Mer, where seawater surged up to the roofs of a little homes. Many people woke to find their houses already flooded and multiform told how they had to float to reserve as H2O poured in by the windows.A orator for Frances puncture services, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Vailli, pronounced 9 people were still blank and scores some-more were injured.The charge additionally caused 6 deaths in Germany – together with a two-year-old kid who drowned after he was blown in to a river. Three people died in Spain, and Belgium and Portugal had one deadliness each.Frances railways suffered vital delays, and cancellations one after another yesterday at Frankfurt airfield – one of Europes majority critical hubs.Mr Sarkozy flew over flooded areas and met locals in L"Aiguillon-sur-Mer, earnest to fast channel liberation funds."It is a inhabitant disaster, a human play with a distressing genocide toll," Mr Sarkozy said. "The obligatory thing is to await the family groups who have members blank or dead."The French personality additionally attempted to fixed a charge of critique over the state of the countrys sea walls, observant it was as well early to pull conclusions."There are dead, blank people and we owe them the compassion," he said. "It is positively not the impulse to begin polemical arguments."One central remarkable only how old a little sea walls were. "The sea wall that pennyless antiquated from (the era] of Napoleon," Philippe de Villiers, a far-right statesman who heads the informal supervision in Vendée, told France-Info. "Either we set up (new] sea walls, in that box they need to be taller and taller … or we have to set up serve inland."In Portugals Azores islands, a peep inundate swept a propagandize train off a road. The motorist and one kid are blank on S�o Miguel, one of the archipelagos 9 islands.The Azores distortion 900 miles west of mainland Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean.