On Saturday morning, the Haute-Savoie Prefecture released an Orange Alert warning of violent gales. But the winds of Saturday night exceeded even their expectations. From 22:00 hrs on Saturday, the wind strengthened & swept the Chamonix valley in increasingly violent bursts, with peaks of up to 180 km / h being recorded. This unleashing of natural energy saw whole sections of mountain forest destroyed, with hundreds of trees falling on roads in the valley and on the access road to the Mont Blanc tunnel, closing the tunnel to traffic. Meanwhile, dozens of roofs were ripped and torn, especially in Chamonix and Les Houches. Roofs were damaged on public buildings such as the Chamonix ice rink and climbing wall, together with many buildings, town-centre shops & private chalets. The climax came at midnight. At the entrance to the Mont Blanc Tunnel, a 20,000 volt electric cable broke, plunging the Chamonix Valley & the Aiguille du Midi into darkness until 4:00 am! A tragedy was narrowly averted when a tree fell on a parked car, with two Polish people inside. Somehow, the couple escaped uninjured. The mayor of Chamonix, Eric Fournier, said the worst had been avoided. "We had already taken precautions, by prohibiting traffic in the afternoon on all the roads lined with trees." A good decision, given the number of tree trunks littering the roads. Yesterday, the mayor of Chamonix and the mayor of Les Houches, Patrick Dole, formally asked the Prefect of the Haute-Savoie to recognise a state of natural disaster for the area.
