PARIS (AP) – Violent winds and winter storms hit France on Friday, killing a 43-year-old woman taking her kids to school in southern France and injuring nearly 50 other people in the north.
Elsewhere in Europe, British authorities put the military on standby for the possibility of flooding along the east coast and the Vatican sheltered homeless people in a church from unusually cold weather in Rome.
The woman killed in the hills above the southern French city of Nice was hit on the head as a tall Cypress tree snapped in a powerful gust as she left her house to take her children to school, said Lt. Col. Dominique Blasius of the Alpes-Maritimes region.
“This happened in front of her children,” he said.
The children called their father. He used a chain saw to try to free his wife from the fallen tree, but she was already dead when a fire crew arrived, Blasius said.