Winds of 117km/h ripped roofs off houses, collapsed a thousand-year-old castle, and sent a cycling race into chaos. Now, 39 people are injured, and residents are picking through the rubble of homes that were standing just hours ago.
You hear the noise first. Then the roof lifts off. Then everything you own is in the air. For the people of Pomas, a small village in south-west France, that is exactly what happened on Monday.
A tornado carved a path of destruction through Pomas, a village just south of Carcassonne, injuring 39 people and damaging an estimated 300 homes. Fifteen were taken to hospital. Two are in critical condition.
The winds hit 117km/h. Roofs came off. Trees snapped. Cars were tossed around like toys.
One resident, Pierre, told French radio that half the village was simply gone. He watched the tornado form and described it as a “huge red and yellow chimney” swirling above the rooftops.
Then there was the castle. A stone structure that had stood for a millennium lost a third of itself in seconds.
“There’s a huge castle and a third of it has collapsed even though these are stones that have stood for 1,000 years,” Pierre told Ici Occitanie.
For others, the terror was deeply personal. One man told reporters his pregnant wife was injured when their house caved in on top of her.
Chantal, another resident, was inside when the tornado hit. She heard a massive roar, watched everything lift into the air, and then felt her roof come down on her head.
“I’ve got no house left, that’s for sure,” she told French radio. “I was really scared. I thought that’s it, this is my final hour.”
The chaos spread well beyond Pomas. About 2,800 homes across 10 nearby villages lost electricity. The third stage of the Vuelta a España cycling race, which was passing through the Aude region, had to be abandoned entirely when a hailstorm forced riders to take shelter just 15km from the finish line.
Emergency crews rushed in. More than 120 firefighters and rescue workers descended on the village to dig through the wreckage and treat the wounded.
Local sub-prefect Emmanuelle Plantier-Lemarchand confirmed she was not aware of anyone missing, and revised the injury count down from 41 to 39.
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France is no stranger to tornadoes. The national weather service, Météo-France, says the country sees several dozen every year. But most are small and pass quickly. This one did not.
The orange thunderstorm alert had been issued across large parts of the south-west. The warning was there. But when a storm like this drops on a village of old stone houses, a warning only buys you a few seconds.
Now the people of Pomas are sleeping under tarps or in shelters, staring at the skeleton of a castle that survived a thousand years of history but not a single Monday afternoon.
