Freak Storm Tornado Causes Chaos in Hamburg
Tornados regularly hit the United States but remain unusual in the calmer climate of Europe. Residents of Hamburg, one of Germany's largest cities, got a crash course in the ferocity of such storms on Monday night when a freak tornado wreaked havoc, killing two people and leaving 300,000 without power during the night.
The tornado struck in the south of the city at around 7 p.m. and brought three tall building cranes crashing down, damaging houses and wrecking cars. Two of the cranes had still been manned by operators high up in their cabins and the men died in the fall.
The storm caused chaos in the city as lightning knocked out railway signal boxes and brought train traffic to a standstill. A corrugated iron roof torn off a dockside building severed a high voltage power line and short-circuited the electricity supply. The water supply to thousands of households was interrupted as the lightning stopped pumping systems.
Roofs were blown off and trees pulled out. Hundreds of police were drafted into the city to prevent looting. The mobile phone network also stopped working.
Power was restored to most areas on Tuesday morning as the clean-up began. "The situation is slowly returning to normal but an number of streets are still blocked," said a police spokeswoman.
